Musk and Vitalik take simultaneous actions, causing cryptocurrencies to plunge

In the early morning of May 13, 2021 Beijing time, cryptocurrencies collectively plunged.

BTC retreated nearly 10,000 USDT from around 55,000 USDT, falling to a low of 45,500 USDT, and led to a sharp drop in mainstream currencies.

The recently popular animal MEME coin also fell sharply, especially the Shib price, which was almost halved compared to the price on the evening of May 12.

Musk

In the early morning of May 13, 2021, Beijing time, Tesla CEO Musk announced on social media that Tesla would suspend accepting Bitcoin payments because of concerns that Bitcoin mining and trading would lead to a rapid increase in the consumption of fossil fuels, especially coal, which has the worst impact on all fossil fuel emissions.

At the same time, Musk said that cryptocurrency is a good idea from many aspects and has a promising future, but this cannot be achieved at a significant cost to the environment. Tesla will not sell any Bitcoin, and as long as Bitcoin is mined using sustainable energy, Tesla intends to use Bitcoin for transactions. Tesla is also seeking to use other cryptocurrencies that consume less than 1% of Bitcoin's energy.

However, many people obviously do not agree with Musk's reason for "Tesla suspending acceptance of Bitcoin", because a large part of the electricity consumed by Bitcoin mining comes from "abandoned electricity and water" due to inconvenient transportation, lack of energy consumption market in the surrounding area, and the possibility of being wasted.

Moreover, Musk previously agreed that Bitcoin would incentivize renewable energy when responding to a Twitter CEO.

Golden Finance found that Tesla’s announcement to suspend acceptance of Bitcoin payments came less than two months after Tesla’s official US website began accepting Bitcoin payments.

Two weeks ago, Tesla disclosed in its financial report that it spent $1.5 billion on Bitcoin in the first quarter of this year, and sold some Bitcoin in the quarter, making a net profit of $101 million. Tesla's CFO said in a conference call that Bitcoin holdings decreased by 10% in the quarter, which slightly helped the company's quarterly performance growth. Tesla will continue to invest in Bitcoin and believes in the "long-term value" of Bitcoin.

It is worth noting that after Musk released the message on Twitter, Bitcoin plunged, retreating nearly 10,000 USDT from around 55,000 USDT to a low of 45,500 USDT.

In addition to Musk's tweet, some people believe that the reason for Bitcoin's big plunge last night was that the recent crypto market was too hot and needed to collapse.

In addition, the market turmoil caused by the US CPI data in April may also be a trigger. Data released by the US Department of Labor on Wednesday showed that the US overall CPI in April increased by 4.2% year-on-year, significantly exceeding the market expectation of 3.6% and the growth rate hit a new high since September 2008; the core CPI in April increased by 3% year-on-year, higher than the market expectation of 2.3%, the fastest growth since January 1996.

The U.S. CPI data for April, which exceeded expectations, dealt a heavy blow to the market, with stocks and bonds in the U.S. market suffering a double blow overnight.

The three major U.S. stock indexes fell collectively, hitting the largest single-day drop in recent days: the S&P 500 index closed down 2.14% to a six-week low, the largest single-day drop since February. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 1.99%, the lowest since April 8 and the largest single-day drop since January. The Nasdaq closed down 2.67%, the lowest since March 25, and has fallen more than 5% this week, nearly 8% lower than the record closing point on April 27.

Technology stocks were the first to be hit. Facebook fell 2.7% and then closed down 1.3%. It once fell below $300 during the session and closed at its lowest level since April 23. Amazon and Apple fell more than 2%, and Microsoft fell nearly 3%, both hitting their lowest levels since March 31. Apple and Microsoft both fell for three consecutive days. Netflix fell more than 2%, hitting its lowest level since November 24 last year. Google's parent company Alphabet fell more than 3%, falling for three consecutive days to its lowest level since April 1.

U.S. Treasuries were also sold off, with the 10-year Treasury yield approaching 1.70% to a one-month high.

Vitalik Buterin

In addition to mainstream currencies, the animal MEME coins that have been popular recently have also fallen sharply, especially Shib, which has almost halved compared to its price on the evening of May 12.

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin began selling a large number of MEME tokens in the early morning of May 13, including 660 billion Shiba Inu tokens SHIB, 140 billion Akita Inu tokens AKITA, 43 billion Dogelon Mars tokens ELON, and 206 trillion HUSKY, earning a total of about 16,000 ETH, worth about US$63 million.

Vitalik Buterin donated a large amount of ETH and remaining MEME tokens sold to charities, such as: 13,292 ETH to the non-profit charity Givewell, 50 trillion SHIB (worth approximately US$1.2 billion) to the Indian New Crown Crypto Relief Foundation, 1,000 ETH and 430 billion ELON tokens to the Methuselah Foundation, 1,050 ETH to the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, and 49 trillion AKITA to the Gitcoin community multisig address.