LONDON: A “#bitcoin” tag on Elon Musk’s Twitter profile page led to a 14 percent jump in the cryptocurrency on Friday, the latest in a series of market moves triggered by comments on his social media account.
The Twitter handle of the world’s richest person has joined the growing list of things to watch for those trading stocks for personal or professional purposes, and comes amid the rising prominence of the’WallStreetBets’ Reddit chat room that drove skyrocketing gains for GameStop shares.
That forum grabbed Musk’s attention too when he tweeted “Gamestonk!!” on Tuesday, along with a link to the Reddit stock trading discussion group behind the year-to-date 2,500 percent-plus rally in the video game retailer.
“Stonks” is a tongue-in-cheek term for stocks widely used on social media. His supporters in the Reddit forum affectionately refer to him as “Papa Musk.”
Justifiably, his tweets led to surges in other stocks too.
Shares of fast-growing Polish game developer CD Projekt soared 16 percent on Thursday after Musk tweeted: “The esthetics of Cyberpunk are incredible btw.....” Cyberpunk is the company’s flagship game.
Similarly, online retailing platform Etsy’s stock jumped 9 percent on Tuesday right after Musk tweeted: “I kinda love Etsy.” He said he bought a “hand knit wool Marvin the Martian helm” for his dog.
Shares of his own firm Tesla dipped 1.2 this week after a rally of nearly 700 percent over the last year.
Bitcoin rally
Bitcoin, meanwhile, riding on Musk’s tag, was up 10.2 percent to $36,901 by 1505 GMT on Friday.
The cryptocurrency jumped over 300 percent last year, as bigger US investors and corporations sought exposure to it, and touched an all-time high of $42,000 last month.
In December, Musk asked about the possibility of converting “large transactions” of Tesla’s balance sheet into bitcoin, in a Twitter exchange with a well-known advocate for the digital currency.
“That would be a very big deal,” said Christopher Bendiksen of digital asset manager CoinShares on Friday.
Traders also cited positive comments on bitcoin by hedge fund manager Ray Dalio as supporting sentiment.
The Bridgewater Associates founder wrote on Thursday that the cryptocurrency was “one hell of an invention,” adding that he viewed it as a “gold-like alternative asset.”
Smaller cryptocurrencies including ethereum and XRP that tend to move in tandem with bitcoin also jumped, as much as 5 percent and 8 percent respectively.
Bitcoin to online petwear: ‘Papa Musk’ lures investors
https://arab.news/ger8y
Bitcoin to online petwear: ‘Papa Musk’ lures investors
- The cryptocurrency jumped over 300 percent last year
World faces largest-ever oil supply disruption on Middle East war, IEA says
LONDON: The war in the Middle East is creating the biggest oil supply disruption in history, the International Energy Agency said on Thursday, a day after the agency agreed to release a record volume of oil from strategic stockpiles.
Global supply is expected to drop by 8 million barrels per day in March due to the blocking of the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow channel along the Iranian coast, since the US and Israel began a campaign of airstrikes on Iran on Feb. 28.
Middle East Gulf countries have cut total oil production by at least 10 million bpd — a volume equal to almost 10 percent of world demand — as a result of the conflict, the IEA said in its latest monthly oil market report, adding that without a rapid restart of shipping flows these losses were set to increase.
“Shut-in upstream production will take weeks and, in some cases, months to return to pre-crisis levels depending on the degree of field complexity and the timing for workers, equipment and resources to return to the region,” the agency said.
