BitDigest May 13 · Issue #901

• Crypto prices sell off on environmentally-conscious tweet by Elon Musk
• Hungary planning to cut tax rate on digital currencies in effort to convince investors to declare gains
• IRS says since crypto is considered property it can be seized for overdue tax settlements

Weekly Stock Update

The Voice of Elon

I was arriving home from work expecting a quiet evening listening to the Business of Esports weekly livestream (another of my projects), when suddenly my phone starting beeping and I saw Elon Musk’s tweet. Reminiscent of many nights in the past, I stared at my screen watching bitcoin fall from $55,000 to $52.5k, $51.9, $50.7 and then the big drop below $47,000. Musk’s tweet was an attack on bitcoin, but the entire crypto market responded with all of the top coins selling off on the news. Even Musk’s favored DOGE dropped from $0.46 down to $0.36. (Crypto prices found buyers at these depressed levels and prices have since settled.)

Two questions kept me up last night.

1.What was Elon thinking? Unlike many new crypto-fan-boys, he definitely understood how mining worked when Tesla  announced it would accept bitcoin as payment for new automobiles in February.

Credit to my friend, Fundstrat Analyst David Grinder who tweeted what many of us were thinking:

2.What’s next? Is he already planning to accept another digital currency? Has he already identified the coin that “use[s] <1% of bitcoin’s energy/transaction.”

Musks message is not new and I do not think people really care if Tesla accepts bitcoin. His message on the high energy usage by miners is a repeated attack, but this time it’s from a supposed supporter who some people even believe could be Satoshi

I want to share a chart on the energy based cost of payments. This is something many of us have asked about and this is the first time I have seen this information depicted. I am guessing we will start to see this in many forms going forward.

The Headlines

Market Data

Thoughts on the Ecosystem

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