Elon Musk, a notorious Twitter troll and the world’s richest man, appears to be having more fun stirring up controversy in the cryptocurrency space.
Considering that Musk recently made a $1.5 billion Bitcoin purchase for Tesla, his heavy focus on Dogecoin is rather odd. After his most recent Dogecoin tweet, criticizing the centralization of tokens, DOGE took a 20 percent price hit.
Musk Barks Up Dogecoin Whales
This price decrease coincided with a marketwide slump for cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin (BTC) dropped 5 percent while Ethereum (ETH) fell by 8%. However, DOGE has seen a particularly substantial drop, at one point losing 25% from the daily open.
This all happened just before Musk tweeted out, “If major Dogecoin holders sell most of their coins, it will get my full support. Too much concentration is the only real issue IMO [in my opinion].”
Although Musk has a penchant for speaking positively about the Shiba Inu- inspired token, this was decidedly critical. DOGE has seen massive pumps over the last few weeks following tweets from Musk promoting the cryptocurrency and events that led Reddit-based speculators to move from stocks over to DOGE.
This massive influx caused BINANCE CEO Changpeng Zhao to take notice. He decided to address the pump head-on, highlighting some potential pitfalls that the DOGE community could face.
On Feb. 4, Zhao tweeted;
Some pros/risks of #Doge.
Pros: Cool, fun, PR manager @elonmusk. Decentralized in the sense there are no "core team". It's abandoned.
Risks:
1 address holds 27% of all #DOGE.
Top 20 addresses holds more than 50%+ of all #DOGE
Kinda "centralized" in that sense.
"abandoned".
— CZBinance (@cz_binance) February 4, 2021
With a single address holding over 25 percent of the entire supply, and the next 19 biggest addresses holding another 25 or more percent of the coins, DOGE may not be as decentralized as holders and speculators hope.
Watch What I Do, Not What I Say
Interestingly enough, Musk tweets heavily about DOGE but doesn’t seem to actually have his sights on the meme currency. Whether he is merely having fun, trolling, or tweeting his genuine concerns, Musk has clearly shown which cryptocurrency he prefers by putting his money where his mouth is. Telsa made a massive Bitcoin acquisition, but does not own a single DOGE.
Although the tech billionaire and genius frequently mentions the project, investors and speculators need to notice Musk’s actions, not just his words. While Musk was watching retailers FOMO pump into DOGE, he was steadily accumulating Bitcoin.
