Elon Musk, Wall Street Bets, GameStop, and Bitcoin to $38K: The Weekly Crypto Market Update

This week will probably go down in history. Not for the cryptocurrency market but for Wall Street. Of course, this doesn’t mean that Bitcoin didn’t do its thing – it did, and this time it was Elon Musk responsible.

First things first, though, a few days ago, Redditors took Wall Street at its own game. To be precise, Wall Street Bets, a group that exploded in popularity on the forum and quickly gained millions of followers, decided to open long positions on a legacy stock – GME. This is the stock of the GameStop company. The reason? Well, it turned out that Wall Street hedge funds were overly exposed to their short positions on the stock.

In a matter of days, the share price surged by more than 600%, short squeezing the hedge funds and causing billions of dollars of liquidations. This isn’t why this week was so important, however.

In an attempt to patch the wounds, major trading platforms such as Robinhood restricted their capabilities, disallowing users to buy more of the stock, allowing them only to sell. In a move that many believe was to protect Wall Street, NASDAQ also stepped in and halted GME trading. Regardless of how all this pans out, the genie is out of the bottle, and it’s very interesting to see how it will play out.

Now, back in the cryptocurrency market, many saw an alternative for all of the above – decentralization prevents it. However, an account on Twitter going by the handle ‘WSB Chairman’ asked if Dogecoin has ever been at $1. This was all people needed to start buying it and the coin skyrocketed by more than 1000% in less than a day.

Just today, Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, put Bitcoin as the only word in his Twitter bio. Needless to say, this sent its price to the sky, as BTC gained more than $6,000 in less than an hour before correcting to the levels it currently trades at.

As mentioned above, this week will surely go down in history. How it all plays out? We have yet to see, though it surely will be a sight to remember.

Market Data

Market Cap: $1015B | 24H Vol: 229B | BTC Dominance: 64.1%

BTC: $34,633 (+6.83%) | ETH: $1,325 (+8.28%) | XRP: $0.281 (+3.58%)

From Billions in Losses To Political Speech: The GameStop Soap Opera Until Today. Millions of users united behind the popular Wall Street Bets group took the shares of GameStop to the skies. In doing so, they wreaked havoc on a few hedge funds and exposed the inherent issues that are rooted deep within the traditional financial system.

Robinhood, Ameritrade Halt GME Trading as Former SEC Chair Weighs in. After Wall Street Bets users had the stock of GME surge by more than 600% and liquidating hedge funds in the process, Robinhood and Ameritrade halted trading in what seemed as an attempt to prevent further damage to ‘smart money.’

Nasdaq CEO Says They May Halt Trading in Case of ‘Increased Social Media Chatter’ Following GME Stock Fiasco. Following the GME stock fiasco, the CEO of one of the world’s largest platforms, NASDAQ, said that they might begin halting trading in case of ‘increased social media chatter.’ This comes as a supposed attempt to protect investors from rampant volatility that it may cause.

Wall Street Bets ‘Chairman’ Tweet Sends Dogecoin (DOGE) Soaring 1000% in Hours (Updated). In another event related to Wall Street Bets, the price of Dogecoin soared over 1,000% in hours after the group’s supposed ‘Chairman’ tweeted about it. DOGE also became the most discussed cryptocurrency on social media, surpassing the likes of Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Bitcoin’s Price Could Top at $300,000 if History Repeats: Analysis. According to a recent analysis, if bitcoin is to repeat what it did back in time, this might just be the beginning of a cycle that can take its price to a top of $300,000.

Reddit Doubles-Down on Blockchain: Partners With The Ethereum Foundation. In a bid to improve scalability on its platform and after launching Community Points for two subreddit groups, Reddit has partnered with the Ethereum Foundation to also strengthen open-source development.

Charts

This week we have a chart analysis of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Stellar, and Uniswap- click here for the full price analysis.