Key Points
Elon Musk’s Saturday Night Live Appearance
- SpaceX Doge flight
- UBS to offer crypto services?
- Binance temporarily suspends withdrawals
- Ethereum breaches $4,000
By Samuel Indyk
Investing.com – Cryptocurrencies have been in focus over recent days with prices continuing to be choppy as markets digest the recent news. Here's the latest with all you need to know.
Elon Musk’s Saturday Night Live Appearance
On Saturday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk made his long-awaited appearance on Saturday Night Live. Dogecoin lost a third of its value after Musk called the cryptocurrency a “hustle”. Prior to the show, Dogecoin was trading at around $0.65, having rallied in the build up on expectations Musk would talk about the meme-based cryptocurrency.
“If an asset can drop 30% on the back of one individual’s appearance on Saturday Night Live, this tells you there’s not a huge amount of fundamental value holding up its price,” said AJ Bell financial analyst Laith Khalaf.
SpaceX Doge flight
Musk and Dogecoin never seem to be too far away and late on Sunday, Musk’s company SpaceX announced they would be accepting Dogecoin as payment to launch a lunar mission next year.
The “DOGE-1 Mission to the Moon” is to launch in the first quarter of next year. Elon Musk tweeted that the mission will be “paid for in Doge” and that it will be the first crypto and meme in space.
“The SpaceX Dogecoin moon mission isn’t a giant leap for cryptocurrencies, because back here on planet Earth, crypto’s long term adoption by consumers, businesses and investors remains highly uncertain, to say the least,” said Khalaf.
“While SpaceX might accept Dogecoin as payment, those Dogecoins will have been bought by people earning money in dollars, euros and pounds, and then converting it. Until cryptocurrencies are used for things as mundane as paying your mortgage or your phone bill, or indeed receiving your wages, as a medium of exchange they simply add an extra layer to transactions, and most don’t actually perform a useful function in the real economy.”
UBS to offer crypto services?
Swiss bank UBS may be the next giant financial institution to enter the crypto space. The company is reportedly considering several alternatives for offering the asset class amid a surge in client interest, according to Bloomberg.
Any offering would reportedly be a very small portion of the clients’ overall wealth due to volatility.
UBS would be following the likes of Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) and Bank of New York Mellon (NYSE:BK) who have announced plans to offer crypto services in recent months. Similarly, Citigroup said just last week they are looking at options to provide a service to clients following an increase in demand.
Binance temporarily suspends withdrawals
Early on Monday, the cryptocurrency exchange Binance briefly suspended withdrawals.
The company announced on Twitter that withdrawals were temporarily suspended and withdrawal requests would be added to a queue but not processed until the issue was resolved.
Approximately 30 minutes later the company confirmed that withdrawals had resumed.
Ethereum breaches $4,000
The world’s second largest cryptocurrency continued its recent charge higher as Ethereum broke above $4,000 for the first time ever on Monday. Reaching a record high for the third consecutive trading day.
Ethereum’s rally has come on hopes that the network will have wider use in the future due to its role in Decentralised Finance, or DeFi.
“It's not a meme joke coin, it actually has some application use,” said Pepperstone’s Chris Weston.
The latest run up comes after the European Investment Bank launched a digital bond on the Ethereum network last week.
Over the last 24 hours, Ethereum is trading higher by around 10% above $4,100.
Other major cryptocurrencies are mostly higher although Bitcoin trades broadly flat over the last 24 hours just below $58,000. The world’s largest cryptocurrency has not traded above $60,000 since moving below that level on 18th April.
“The technical picture suggests the correction lower has run its course for now in a buy-everything world,” said Jeffrey Halley, Senior Market Analyst at OANDA. “A rally through $60,000 will signal a test of the all-time highs around $64,900, and possibly more if the US Dollar stays weak and because of the announcement that a prominent investment bank has established a cryptocurrency trading team.”