“Everyone was talking about him like he’s walking on water and has a zillion dollars,” Musk said of the now-disgraced Bankman-Fried. “And that [was] not my impression.”

Elon Musk didn’t waste any time jumping into the Twitter fray after an apparent hack of bankrupt crypto lender FTX drained hundreds of millions of dollars from company-controlled wallets.

Just a couple of hours after the apparent hack began late Friday night, Musk tweeted “FTX meltdown/ransack being tracked in real-time on Twitter.” He also responded to a post by crypto entrepreneur Sam Altman with a raunchy meme of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried.

Around 2:30 am EST on Saturday morning, Musk joined a Twitter Space with over 60,000 listeners to discuss the hack of FTX and share his thoughts on Bankman-Fried.

“To be honest, I’d never heard of him,” Musk said. “But then I got a ton of people telling me [that] he’s got, you know, huge amounts of money that he wants to invest in the Twitter deal. And I talked to him for about half an hour. And I know my bullshit meter was redlining. It was like, this dude is bullshit – that was my impression.”

“Then I was like, man, everyone including major investment banks – everyone was talking about him like he’s walking on water and has a zillion dollars. And that [was] not my impression…that dude is just – there’s something wrong, and he does not have capital, and he will not come through. That was my prediction,” Musk added.

Musk also told listeners that they should keep their crypto in cold wallets, not in exchanges.

“I would reaffirm that, if you have crypto, you should have it in a directly-accessible cold wallet. Not in an exchange,” Musk said. “That would be wise.”

The spectacular collapse of FTX – until this week one of the largest and seemingly most regulated exchanges in the world – hasn’t turned Musk off crypto as a whole.

“I think there probably is a future for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and DOGE. I can’t really speak to the others. But if you’ve got one of those three in a cold wallet, and off an exchange, I think my guess is it works out well,” he said.

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The price of some 67 tokens dropped more than 90% following their issuance, on-chain data shows.

A new class of Shiba Inu-inspired tokens was birthed on BNB Chain and Ethereum this Tuesday a related tweet by technology billionaire Elon Musk.

Names like “BabyDogeTwitter,” “dogenaldtrump,” “SpaceTwitterDoge,” and “ElonDogeTwit,” populated the two blockchains after Musk tweeted an image of a Shiba Inu dog wearing a Twitter T-shirt in front of a classic Halloween pumpkin with the social media platform’s bird logo etched on the side of it.

Blockchain security firm PeckShield said in a tweet in Asian afternoon hours that over 67 of such tokens fell 90% in the hours following their issuance, with 45 tokens falling 100%. This cumulatively led to losses of thousands of dollars among investors who punted on the newly-issued tokens in hopes of a long-term price appreciation.

Over 42 tokens were marked by PeckShield as honeypots, a term that describes illicit tokens that change permissions on unsuspecting users’ crypto wallets, with the goal of eventually transferring all their crypto tokens out of those wallets into one controlled by a scammer.

Musk’s tweet also sparked off a rally in dogecoin, which jumped over 14 cents to gain more than 23% in the past 24 hours. Floki Inu, another Shiba Inu-themed token, also surged by a similar figure, while Shiba Inu’s SHIB tokens jumped 8%.

Such irrational exuberance came amid a relatively flat crypto market, with bitcoin and ether rising nominally in the past 24 hours.

Musk has been a major supporter of DOGE, which has become a proxy for sentiment about him. The entrepreneur’s statements about the token have also consistently influenced its price, as previously reported.

Dogecoin has been on a run ever since Musk confirmed his takeover of Twitter last week, with the token’s futures racking up over $90 in liquidations over the weekend in an unusual move.

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The billionaire entrepreneur is supposed to close his purchase of the social media platform on Friday.

Popular meme coin dogecoin (DOGE) was up nearly 16% over the past 24 hours as billionaire Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter approached the finish line.

The Tesla founder’s $44 million deal is supposed to close Friday.

Musk has been a major supporter of DOGE, which has become a proxy for sentiment about him. The entrepreneur’s statements about the token have also consistently influenced its price.

DOGE was most recently trading at slightly over 7 cents. It had been languishing below 6 cents for much of the past six weeks. A year ago, DOGE was trading at 25 cents.

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“Macro and micro factors are complex, and cash on hand is welcome,” a trader interviewed by CoinDesk said.

Electric-car maker Tesla sold over $936 million of bitcoin (BTC) in the second quarter amid a broad crypto-market decline and weakening economic conditions, a decision that led to generally positive reactions among the retail crypto community. Institutional crypto traders were less sanguine.

In an earnings call, CEO Elon Musk said Tesla wanted to maximize its cash position amid the “uncertainty of the COVID lockdowns in China.” Tesla recorded a $64 million gain on the sale.

Institutional crypto traders had mixed views about the move. Some said it was justified given Tesla’s business interests; others said the decision could influence market participants.

“The Tesla news is indeed a bearish headline, but not completely unexpected,” Katie Talati, director of research at Arca, told CoinDesk. “According to their filings, Tesla sold their BTC reserves at about $29k over the past quarter as a way to have positive free cash flow. Without this, they would have reported cashflow negative results.”

Talati said the news was “not a knock on the fundamental thesis for bitcoin” but had more to do with Tesla’s Treasury-management strategy during an overall down market.

“In the long run, this shouldn’t matter as the success of BTC depends on adoption across many corporates, individuals, and governments, not just one company,” she said.

Vadym Synegin, vice president at Web3 ecosystem WeWay, took the opposing view. The sales came “against Tesla’s initial plans to hold the premier coin for the long term,” he told CoinDesk. Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market cap, was used “as a sacrifice” because the company had to bolster its cash position and performance in one of its most difficult quarters.

“Tesla said it is open to buying more bitcoin in the future, but industry stakeholders may not be pleased with the idea seeing the instability the firm can wield,” Synegin said. “Its influence is huge in the industry.”

“While every firm has its corporate strategy, the Tesla sell-off might trigger some to reconsider their positions in both the short and long term respectively,” he said.

Anton Gulin, business director at AAX Exchange, shared that view. While the sales were to do with “pure risk management and a desire to please investors before reporting,” retail investors take such actions seriously, he said.

“From an ethical point of view, Musk’s actions and statements have already become a meme in their own right and are challenging to take seriously,” Gulin told CoinDesk. “It is just another example and indicator of why you should think with your head and not look for idols.”

“It is clear that [the] macro and micro factors are complex, and cash on hand is welcome,” he said. “It is also impossible to miss that the market has become more liquid, and this sell-off has not buried it to the ground. The industry has moved on.”

Other traders expressed the view that the bitcoin market is much larger even than any influential participant.

“If Tesla sold its bitcoin in Q2 of 2021, the impact of the news on the crypto market certainly would have been much greater,” Mikkel Morch, executive director at the crypto hedge fund ARK36, said to CoinDesk.

Tesla’s purchase last year “gave the biggest cryptocurrency a much-needed boost from the narrative perspective. It was interpreted as an endorsement of bitcoin as an institutional-grade investment.” Since then, the situation has changed. “Bitcoin is now a global macro asset and, as such, is driven by forces much greater than Musk,” he said.

‘Granted, the price of bitcoin did have a knee-jerk reaction to the news, but a healthy pullback was actually expected after seven straight days of gains,” Morch said.

Meanwhile, the sale doesn’t end Tesla’s involvement in the crypto market. Musk said in the earnings call that the company was open to “boosting its bitcoin exposure in the future.” And the firm has kept its dogecoin holdings.

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The billionaire said he believes the number of false and spam accounts counted in the social media platform’s monetizable daily active users is “wildly” above 5.%

Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk scrapped his $42 billion takeover deal to buy Twitter (TWTR), claiming the information provided by the social media giant was false and misleading, prompting the company to threaten to sue to enforce the agreement.

Musk, in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, claimed Twitter was in material breach of multiple provisions of the deal and had apparently made false and misleading representations that Musk had relied upon.

Musk also claimed the company is likely to suffer a ” company material adverse effect.”

In May, Musk put the transaction on hold until he could verify that spam or fake accounts represent fewer than 5% of the total users on Twitter.

In today’s announcement, Musk’s attorney’s made it clear that the billionaire believes the actual number of bots making up total users is much higher than 5%.

“Preliminary analysis by Mr. Musk’s advisors of the information provided by Twitter to date causes Mr. Musk to strongly believe that the proportion of false and spam accounts included in the reported mDAU (monetizable daily active user) count is wildly higher than 5%.”

Twitter’s board responded, saying it was “confident” in the agreement and that it intends to close the deal at the agreed-upon $54.20 per share price:

“We are committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk and plan to pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement,” the board said in its statement. “We are confident we will prevail in the Delaware Court of Chancery.”

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TRON founder Justin Sun responded by tweeting he would offer $60 a share, compared with Musk’s $54.20.

Elon Musk, the CEO of electric-car maker Tesla (TSLA), offered to buy social media company Twitter (TWTR) for about $41.3 billion in cash.

The $54.20-a-share offer is a 38% premium over the day before Musk’s investment in the company was made public earlier this month, according to a filing with the SEC.

Musk plans to take the company private in order to “go through the changes that need to be made,” he wrote in a text to Twitter Chairman Bret Taylor replicated in the filing.

In late March, Musk criticized the social media platform for failing to adhere to principles of free speech, saying that it serves as “de facto public town square” and this failure therefore undermines democracy.

“I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy,” Musk stated.

Following Musk’s filing, Justin Sun, the founder of the TRON blockchain, tweeted a thread in which he said he would offer $60 a share for the company.

Twitter shares surged more than 12% in pre-market trading following the news. They were trading recently up about 6.4% to just under $49.

Musk took a 9.2% stake in Twitter for an estimated $2.89 billion earlier this month, quickly followed by an announcement that he would be joining the company’s board of directors. However, CEO Parag Agrawal said a few days later that a board position was no longer on the cards.

“My offer is my best and final offer and if it is not accepted, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder,” Musk said according to the filing.

Owing to the Tesla CEO’s well-known interest in cryptocurrency, his announcements often make ripples in the crypto world. Meme-based crypto dogecoin enjoyed an 11% spike following the news of Musk’s initial Twitter investment, and rose about 6% after Thursday’s news. They are currently up 5% over the last 24 hours.

Twitter has also established itself as a crypto-friendly platform over recent months, adding the ability to send tips in bitcoin last September with the facility extended to ether in February.

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Prices of the memecoin often see a surge after celebrity mentions.

Dogecoin (DOGE) briefly jumped as much as 10% during Asian trading hours on Monday after Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in a tweet that he is not selling his crypto holdings, which includes DOGE.

DOGE exchanged hands at $0.111 on 4:10 UTC amid a largely flat crypto market. It surged following Musk’s tweet at 4:11 UTC, where he said he will continue to hold DOGE, ether, and bitcoin, and reached as high as $0.122 at 4:17 UTC.

The spike was likely driven by automated trading bots that track token mentions from popular accounts on social media sites like Twitter. Musk’s Twitter account, for instance, has a following of over 77.6 million.

Musk has previously tweeted about DOGE on several occasions. In Feb. 2021, he posted a picture of a rocket next to the moon and followed that tweet with a one-word tweet that stated “Doge” – a play on the saying of “going to the moon,” a term for an asset-price surge.

In May. 2021, Musk stated he was working with dogecoin developers to improve system efficiency, which sent DOGE prices flying by 22%.

Musk’s Tesla started accepting DOGE payments on its merchandise store earlier this year, as reported. DOGE payments continue to remain active, with the “Giga Texas Belt Buckle” and other products priced in both U.S. dollars and DOGE.

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Mr. Musk, a celebrity in the universe, tweets about it frequently; It was parodied on the popular TV show “Saturday Night Live”; Collins Dictionary chosen NFT as its word of the Year for 2021.

Exchanges boom and flourish in 2021.

According to a cryptocurrency research institute, The Block Research, as of December 24, global cryptocurrency trading volume exceeded $15 trillion, nearly seven times more than last year.

The bustling 2021 has finally ended, and the cryptocurrency world will usher in new challenges and chances in 2022.

01 The Year of Booming Cryptocurrencies

The Virtual world seems to extract more attention from people.

On Christmas Day last year, the NO.1 download in Apple’s APP Store in the US was a VR app: Oculus.

As a software used to pair with Oculus VR glasses, its hit also means that Meta (formerly Facebook)’s VR glasses have been widely popular over the holiday season.

In addition to this new gift craze, other facts prove the point, such as the cryptocurrency trading volume is seven times more than last year, and Sotheby’s sold more than $100 million of NFT this year.

NFT sales totaled about $14.1 billion in the past year, up from $65 million in the previous year, according to nonfungible.com.

About 16% of Americans hold or once held cryptocurrencies, according to the Pew Research Center. In 2015, the proportion was just 1%. The number of people holding cryptocurrencies worldwide has doubled this year to about 220 million, according to Crypto.com.

Decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges saw an 858% jump in trading volume but accounted for just 6% of cryptocurrency trading volume at $1 trillion.

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase successfully listed on Nasdaq in April with a valuation of $86 billion on its first day of trading. The Capital was bet on cryptocurrencies. In the US alone, venture capital funds invested $7.2 billion in cryptocurrencies in 2021, according to PitchBook. Globally, venture capital invested $29.4 billion.

Cryptocurrencies experienced many twists and turns in 2021. Concepts such as NFT, DAO, metaverse, and Web3 have emerged, and those who can predict the correct trend will withstand the trend, no matter it is institutional investors, retail traders, or practitioners. This is almost a general rule.

02 Challenges And Chances For Exchanges

About 45% of cryptocurrency owners are millennials born between 1980 and 1996, according to a recent survey commissioned by a venture capital giant a16z, a consulting firm.

After the birth of Web3, some organizations claimed that Web3 would have 1 billion users in the next five years, and most of those billion users would be made up of people born after 1980.

Guy Hirsch, Executive Director of eToro USA, said the market was witnessing a generational shift of trust from traditional stock exchanges to digital currency exchanges.

For cryptocurrency institutions, the favor of the millennials is half the battle. In other words, whoever can win over these young people will hold the initiative.

Millennials are statistically more likely to emphasize an investment philosophy that enriches both themselves and the world around them. They prefer cryptocurrencies to gradually solidify real estate and stock markets.

The competitive landscape of cryptocurrency exchanges is not set in stone, and the selection and anticipation of new cryptocurrencies, as well as compliance operations, will be key indicators to distinguish the strengths and weaknesses of cryptocurrency institutions including exchanges.

MEXC started its global compliance operation in 2020, and during this process, it became known for its fast and prescient layout of the cryptocurrency track, which is now among the world’s top 3 spot trading volume after two years.

According to relevant data, MEXC’s overseas users increased by 1,100% in 2021. The annual growth rate of trading volume exceeded 700%, and overseas users accounted for 70% of the total users.

According to MEXC Research and the data source of CoinGecko, the top 10 cryptocurrencies with gains in 2021 are all from MEXC debut projects, and the track mainly covers the two sectors of metaverse and blockchain underlying infrastructure, so it can be seen that the right track is of paramount importance to investment.

It is also worth noting that the top gainer SHIB from MEME registers a surprising 106,363,536% increase. The influences of MEME exerted on the cryptocurrency market defy description.

03 2022 Cryptic Prediction

Looking ahead to 2022, what will happen to the cryptocurrency world?

1. More Capital Than Ever Before

 Since this year, capital giants that have entered the cryptocurrency world include Sequoia Capital, a16z, Coinbase, and so on. In June last year, a16z announced that it had raised $2.2 billion in cryptocurrency funds, which together with its first two early-stage cryptocurrency funds totaled $825 million, bringing its cryptocurrency assets under management to more than $3 billion. On November 15, Paradigm announced it would launch $2.5 billion cryptocurrency investment funds to bet on the next generation of leading cryptocurrency projects.

Beyond that, with millennials entering this field, cryptocurrencies will continue to astonish and enrich the world in 2022.

2. More Design Space  

Ethereum created many innovative models in its early days, such as NFT, DAO, and chain games, which are becoming a reality. Their possibilities are endless.

A large number of DAO teams came into being in the second half of 2021 and then got to grips with the stagnant growth, which was resulted from project mismanagement, brain drains, slow decision making, and misallocation of capital by raising significant amounts of capital. Just like how OpenSea suddenly became a major market for NFT, there will be a winner in the DAO space next year.

3. Arrival Of New Regulations

At a hearing before the House Financial Services Committee on December 8, executives from six cryptocurrency companies, including Coinbase and Circle, called on Congress to make clearer rules for the burgeoning $3 trillion industry, but they also warned that too severe restrictions would push industries overseas.

In October, one executive of a16z travelled to Washington DC to lobby for the regulation of Web3. As a policymaker, a16z has been trying to come up with a potential solution for Web3 network regulation.

It is believed that by 2022, the US government will come up with clear regulations on cryptocurrencies. Globally, “cryptocurrency unicorns” are more likely to emerge among cryptocurrency exchanges and institutions that operate in compliance.

Recently, Ark Invest Founder Catherine Wood released the year-end summary and outlook for the future. Unlike the previous stage of the Internet bubble, whose reappearance seemed to worry us all, (1) today’s technology companies have real market demand, not concept; (2) Investors have taken the potential risks very seriously. Therefore, considering a five-year investment term, the following five fields that Ark focuses on in the future, including DNA sequencing, robotics, energy storage, AI, and blockchain technology, will generate 3-5 times the return on investment.

Anyway, 2022 is bound to be another amazing year. No matter what happens in the market, cryptocurrencies will continue to improve and move toward the inevitable future of the entire world.

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