Fartcoin is the ultimate memecoin with no utility whatsoever, and the incredible thing is that it has amazed the world by claiming a market capitalization of over 500 million dollars. This event is surprising, as the era of memecoins is long gone. Their heyday was in 2019 and 2020, but since the Bitcoin crash around that time, almost all of them have fallen into oblivion. For those who don’t know, Fartcoin has no intrinsic value. Instead, the memecoin derives all of its value from a vibrant community dedicated to sharing jokes and memes […]
Fartcoin is the memecoin par excellence with no utility whatsoever, and the incredible thing is that it has amazed the world by claiming a market capitalization of over 500 million dollars.
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This event is surprising, since the era of memecoins is long gone. Their peak was in 2019 and 2020, but since the fall of Bitcoin around that time, almost all of them have been forgotten.
For those who don’t know, Fartcoin has no intrinsic value. Instead, the memecoin derives its entire value from a vibrant community dedicated to sharing jokes and memes related to flatulence.
BREAKING: Fartcoin's market cap is now greater than 38% of all American publicly-traded companies. pic.twitter.com/obLQK8LNTe
The value of Fartcoin is so high that it could almost enter the SP 500
Even so, no one expected the memecoin to surpass 500 million dollars in market capitalization.
To provide context, let’s consider the fact that Fartcoin is now more valuable than an astonishing 38 percent of all publicly traded U.S. companies.
Of course, according to historical precedents, the memecoin season is still in its infancy. In previous cryptocurrency bull cycles, Bitcoin usually took the initial lead, followed by Ethereum’s Ether, and then memecoins began to record dizzying gains, crowning the peak mania phase of the cycle.
When the 6-month and below #Bitcoin Realized Cap HODL Waves bands surpass ~80%, it's a good indication the market is over-heated, and a major price peak is likely… ?
Currently, however, Bitcoin is still in its leadership phase, which gives credibility to the hypothesis that the market will likely see many iterations of Fartcoin before the current cycle ends.
Let’s consider the fact that many altcoins are still quite far from their all-time highs recorded in the previous bullish cycle.
Interestingly, BlackRock has provided another bullish boost to Bitcoin today by formally recommending a 1 to 2 percent portfolio allocation to spot Bitcoin ETFs.
Meanwhile, it is possible that Fartcoin will register additional gains. But do not expect those gains to last. With these cryptocurrencies, it is best to stay away… at least if you value not having high chances of going broke.
We all know that Bitcoin has skyrocketed since Donald Trump won the elections last November. And that is why many people, including companies, are considering investing in this cryptocurrency as a plan against inflation. Microsoft’s shareholders rejected a proposal asking the company to consider diversifying its investments by including Bitcoin in the mix, but in reality, the company was more open than it might seem. In fact, the reason the board recommended voting against the proposal was that […]
We all know that Bitcoin has skyrocketed since Donald Trump won the elections last November. And that is why many people and companies are considering investing in this cryptocurrency as a plan against inflation.
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Microsoft shareholders rejected a proposal that asked the company to consider diversifying its investments by including Bitcoin in the mix, but in reality, the company was more open than it might seem.
Reasons to say no to Bitcoin in 2024, and yes in 2025
Amy Hood, Chief Financial Officer of Microsoft, provided more details in response to questions posed by shareholders during a Q&A session at the virtual annual meeting held on Tuesday morning. She began by explaining that Microsoft has accepted Bitcoin as a form of customer payment since 2014.
“As we continue to think about the evolution of cryptocurrencies, we have also thought of them as an asset class,” said Hood. Microsoft’s treasury team, along with its board of directors, “examines all asset classes available to us,” added the director.
BREAKING: @Microsoft shareholders reject the proposal for a strategic #Bitcoin reserve.
In 5 years, they’ll understand. Everyone buys Bitcoin at the price they deserve.#BTC doesn’t wait. It simply transfers wealth to those who see.
— Michael Saylor ⚡ Founder of MicroStrategy (Parody) (@Saylorsatsire) December 10, 2024
In her comments at the meeting, Amy Hood emphasized the importance of liquidity along with capital preservation and income to finance operations, invest in partnerships, and build data centers, among other uses of their cash.
“So with those three objectives, we look across asset classes, including cryptocurrency, as a form of investment,” said Hood. “It’s something we consistently cover with the board and continue to evaluate different categories year after year.”
The six external proposals were rejected by Microsoft’s shareholders during the company’s virtual annual meeting on Tuesday, according to preliminary results. Detailed results are expected to be released next week.
The Bitcoin shareholders’ proposal, presented by the National Center for Public Policy Research, noted that Microsoft had $484 billion in assets as of March 31, including investments in U.S. government securities and corporate bonds that “barely exceed inflation,” as stated in the proposal text.
“In inflationary times like the current ones, companies should—and perhaps have the fiduciary duty to—consider diversifying their balance sheets with assets that appreciate more than bonds, even if those assets are more volatile in the short term,” added the presentation in favor of Bitcoin.
Specifically, the proposal asked the board to “conduct an evaluation to determine if diversifying the company’s balance sheet by including Bitcoin is in the best long-term interest of the shareholders.”
On behalf of the proposal, Michael Saylor, a billionaire Bitcoin investor, spoke, who published his presentation on X on December 1, before the meeting. Saylor’s company, MicroStrategy, obviously invests heavily in Bitcoin.
As we said at the beginning, the price of Bitcoin reached a new high on December 4th by reaching 100,000 dollars per Bitcoin before falling today to 94,000 dollars in a widespread cryptocurrency sell-off. Possibly, these large price changes are what do not fully convince shareholders.
Donald Trump is launching a cryptocurrency platform, he announced on Thursday in a post on Truth Social. Trump’s post included a few more details, but he and his children have suggested that it will target unbanked and underserved communities.
“For too long, the average American has been squeezed by big banks and financial elites,” says the post. “It’s time for us to take a stand: together. #BeDefiant”. The name of the platform, The DeFiant Ones, is a play on words with “decentralized finance.”
Trump’s post on Truth Social links to a Telegram channel for the yet-to-be-launched platform, which has posts dating back to August 15th, calling it the “official Telegram channel for the Trump DeFi project.”
What is this Donald Trump crypto project about?
There are no details about what the project entails or whether it is an autonomous decentralized organization, a currency, an exchange market, a cryptocurrency blog or publication, or something completely different.
In July, a company called AMG Software Solutions filed trademark applications for the terms “Be DeFiant,” “World Liberty,” and “World Liberty Financial,” as reported earlier this month by the cryptocurrency publication The Block.
In recent interviews, Trump’s sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, have suggested that the project could be aimed at disadvantaged communities. “Essentially, more than half of this country right now cannot be banked,” said Eric Trump to the New York Post.
“That means they will be rejected for most loans from most institutions. But with this technology, they could have the ability to be approved or denied almost instantly by a lender based on mathematics, not politics. The money could be in their account in minutes, not months,” he explained.
The idea that cryptocurrencies can help the unbanked to have better access to financial services is widely spread in the industry, but some reports suggest otherwise.
The DeFiant Ones is not Trump’s first foray into cryptocurrency. He was the keynote speaker at this year’s Bitcoin Conference in Nashville, Tennessee, during which he promised to fire Gary Gensler, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, a perpetual enemy of the crypto crowd.
In addition, Trump’s presidential campaign started accepting cryptocurrency donations last Tuesday, fulfilling his promise to become the first candidate from a major party to accept digital currencies such as Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH).
The battle to win the vote of the crypto community has begun, with the elections just a few months away. It seems like a very juicy pool of votes for both.
Donald Trump bets on Bitcoin as a real and useful currency in the US
In a recent social media post, former President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, expressed his support for the booming cryptocurrency industry. He said:
“I am very positive and open-minded about companies using cryptocurrencies and everything related to this new and thriving industry. […] Our country should be the leader in the field, there is no second place,” he said on his social network Truth.
This statement comes as both Trump and his rival, current president Joe Biden, seem to be competing for the support of pro-crypto voters in the upcoming presidential elections.
⚠️Esto es importantísimo: Joe Biden acaba de emitir un comunicado oficial, confirmando que NO VETARÁ la nueva ley pro-crypto FIT21 ‼️?
Literalmente esta ley va en contra de la SEC y Gary Gensler, estableciendo un marco regulatorio claro para las criptomonedas ?
After Trump’s pro-crypto stance, it seems that there has been a shift in the Biden administration’s opposition to cryptocurrencies, as well as a softening of the traditionally anti-crypto stance of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Last Wednesday, the White House issued a statement expressing its opposition to the approval by the House of Representatives of a bill on the structure of the cryptocurrency market, but Biden did not threaten to veto it.
The Chamber proceeded to approve the measure, which now goes to the Senate. In addition, on Thursday, Ethereum exchange-traded funds (ETFs) took a significant step towards being available in the US. after the Securities and Exchange Commission approved the filing of key regulatory documents, a measure that was considered extremely unlikely just a month ago.
A group of astrologers who consult the stars for clues about the future behavior of crypto markets. Today’s topic is a cool one.
Marsilio Musing, a financial forecaster based in San Francisco, is dedicated to interpreting the stars to invest in the cryptocurrency market. The people at Wired have spoken with him and what they have found is a true example that pseudosciences can be part of the most ruthless capitalism.
According to The Wired, for him, the art of interpreting planetary movements is similar to making predictions based on the movement of stocks and the performance of assets during a specific period.
“I have been in this for a long time, and I have a particular technical analysis system that I have been developing for many years,” says Marsilio.
A pseudonym to avoid being persecuted in real life
Marsilio says he uses a pseudonym inspired by the Italian Renaissance astrologer Marsilio Ficino because financial astrology is subject to much scrutiny and criticism. He bought his first ETH crypto in 2017 based on some larger “astro patterns,” he says, but worked with Bitcoin in a previous role at a hedge fund.
He is among a group of astrologers who consult the stars in search of clues about the future behavior of crypto markets. There is no clear mechanism that explains why planetary movements are linked to asset prices on planet Earth, but these cryptologists are finding followers anyway.
“Some of the traditional [astrological] theories work quite well, but others don’t, or the markets have their own expression of the root energies (traditional manifestations of the archetype of each sign),” explains Marsilio. A great example, he says, is the link between Bitcoin’s performance in bullish markets and “waning and waxing moons.” Traditional astrologers associate waxing moons with growth and waning moons with decreasing energy.
But in a Twitter thread, Marsilio analyzed the average percentage performance of Bitcoin in a 15-minute timeframe in all markets from April 2020 to the present and discovered that the waning phase of the lunar cycle correlated with an average performance 350% better than during the waxing phase.
Marsilio attracts private clients through Twitter posts, where he has 10,000 followers, and by sharing his data on Tableau and YouTube. For three years, he worked full-time as an astrological financial advisor for a hedge fund investor until his retirement.
Grzegorz Drozdz, market analyst at the Conotoxia financial platform, believes that the 350% figure is misleading, as the arithmetic mean “is heavily influenced by extreme values”. Although Bitcoin price highs tend to occur during shrinking phases, this does not statistically suggest that shrinking phases are generally periods of higher Bitcoin profitability: correlation does not imply causation.
Another financial astrologer from San Francisco, who goes by the name Stellar Prophet, claims to have a Google executive and a high-risk investor among her clients. She explains that most of her clients come from referrals, who then gain access to her private Instagram, where she also posts financial predictions to her close friends list on Instagram, which can be accessed for a fee.
Meanwhile, the financial astrologer from Seattle known as Crypto Damus, real name Robert Weinstein, publishes his general predictions to an audience of 38,300 subscribers on Twitter, conducts private consultations, and sends a weekly newsletter to almost 400 subscribers on Patreon. Each edition of his newsletter begins with a “due diligence” disclaimer to clarify that he is not a financial advisor and that his work is based on “probability”.
Folks there's still Virtual tickets to the May 24-26 @NORWAC conference available
The biggest annual astrology conference in the US With the top astrologers in the world *Including Your Truly
Your clients don’t understand astrology… but they listen to you
Despite the strong emphasis on astrology in all of these accounts, a good number of respondents on social media do not seem to understand the astrological terminology, according to astrologers, but they still follow them and ask for their insights.
“At the end of the day, the issue is not just the accuracy rate, but whether it communicates in a way that is useful for anyone interacting with me. If I make a good prediction and only one out of ten people understand it, then it’s not really valuable,” says Marsilio.
Financial astrologers agree on the importance of certain transits, for example, Marsilo only relies on data collected from transits, while Crypto Damus also invokes the natal chart of Bitcoin, a snapshot of the sky at the time of the genesis block with a timestamp.
“The stellium of Pluto, Mars, and the Sun at the beginning of Capricorn are the most reliable points in the natal chart,” he says. A “stellium” is considered to be three planets within a specific sign at the same time. In the case of Bitcoin, whenever its Capricorn stellium is in a positive transit, Bitcoin tends to see positive movements.
Stellar Prophet uses a similar methodology, but claims that it needs at least four points of positive indicators, for example, a Venus transit interacting with the Bitcoin Sun or a Jupiter and Neptune conjunction in Aquarius, to make an upward movement call.
And although Stellar Prophet does not keep quantitative data on the accuracy of its predictions, it estimates that the majority have been fulfilled as predicted and includes timestamped screenshots in its Instagram Story Highlights. But still, forecasts are not infallible.
The topic is interesting, as interesting as the scam it is. Everything surrounding astrology is nothing more than baseless conjecture, so never invest based on the position of the moon, just like you don’t invest based on whether the day is clear or cloudy.
Google has sued two alleged cryptocurrency scammers, accusing them of using its Play Store to offer fraudulent apps.
Today’s story is the classic story we bring on Sundays, as they tell reality in its most unexpected version and there is a lot to talk about. During the week there is no time for long stories, but today there is.
Google has sued two alleged cryptocurrency scammers, accusing them of using its Play Store to offer fraudulent cryptocurrency trading applications and investment platforms that, instead, simply took users’ money.
These applications were used in a type of romance scam commonly known as “pig butchering”, referring to the fattening of a pig before slaughtering it.
Google sues two people based in China it says used the company’s platforms to distribute and advertise fraudulent crypto apps https://t.co/SOUXP7XfYy
The accused scammers, two app developers based in China and Hong Kong, allegedly uploaded 87 different fraudulent applications to carry out their scams, attracting over 100,000 people who downloaded them.
According to user complaints, Google claims that each of them lost between $100 and tens of thousands of dollars. The apps uploaded by the couple and their anonymous partners have been used in versions of the scam since at least 2019, according to Google.
Google says it is the first company in the industry to take this type of action. It has already closed the apps in the Play Store once it determined they were fraudulent.
Google sues alleged crypto scammers for luring people into investments they’d never get back https://t.co/AHwvfbYk85
“This litigation is a critical step in holding these bad actors accountable and sending a clear message that we will aggressively pursue those who seek to take advantage of our users,” said Google’s General Counsel, Halimah DeLaine Prado, in a statement.
Google claims that it was also harmed by the scheme because it threatens the “integrity” of its app store and diverted resources to detect and dismantle the operation. The company says it suffered economic damages of over $75,000 investigating the fraud.
How the love and crypto scam worked
This is how the alleged scam worked, according to Google’s complaint: developers created fake cryptocurrency exchange and investment applications, presenting them on the Play Store as legitimate investment apps and allegedly falsifying details such as their location in order to upload them.
Next, the alleged scammers or their partners would lure users to the platforms through a mix of romantic messages and YouTube videos. Although this type of scam is often referred to as “pig butchering,” Google states in a footnote to its complaint that it does not adopt or endorse the term.
The initial messages they sent might sound familiar to anyone who has received text spam: messages like “I’m Sophia, do you remember me?” or “I miss you all the time, how are your parents Mike?”, according to the complaint.
If they received a response, the alleged scammers apparently tried to start a conversation and eventually move it to a platform like WhatsApp, before convincing their new “friend” to download one of the fraudulent applications and deposit money into it.
Developers or their partners also sometimes convinced the alleged victims that they could earn commissions by selling the applications themselves as “affiliates” of the platforms, according to the complaint.
Once users were in the applications, developers made the platforms appear convincing by showing a balance and investment performance, claims Google. The only problem: users couldn’t withdraw their money.
According to Google, sometimes the apps allowed to withdraw small amounts of money or demanded a commission or a minimum balance to be able to withdraw money, which ultimately scammed some even more money.
Google accuses developers of violating its terms of service and the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. It asks the court to prevent them from committing further fraud and to award it unspecified damages.
Coindesk, a leading portal for those closely following the blockchain and cryptocurrency world, has been acquired by Bullish, a major player in the industry. Bullish didn’t hesitate to acquire 100% ownership of Coindesk, integrating it into their specialized conglomerate in this sector.
For several years, Coindesk had been an influential platform under the ownership of Digital Currency Group. However, after seven years under this company, its services will now transition to Bullish. The challenge ahead for Bullish is to continue making Coindesk a reference in the crypto sector without making substantial changes to its current staff.
Bullish didn’t hesitate to acquire 100% of Coindesk, although the value of this transfer hasn’t been disclosed. It’s undoubtedly a multimillion-dollar figure, but the exact amount hasn’t been announced yet.
Barry Silbert, one of the co-founders of Digital Currency Group, openly discussed on social media the acquisition by Bullish of a company he previously bought for only half a million dollars. While he also didn’t disclose the transaction amount, he celebrated it as one of the most profitable deals his company has made to date.
2/ I’m incredibly proud of CoinDesk’s growth & development over the last seven years and its transformation into an award-winning media & events company and the most trusted information platform for digital assets
We look forward to seeing Bullish take CoinDesk to the next level
The world of cryptocurrencies has gone through numerous phases over the years. Between 2013 and 2016, this sector was still a relatively unexplored niche with much more modest valuations. However, between 2017 and 2019, there was a huge boom in this alternative financial sector. Subsequently, from 2020 to 2021, it became a media phenomenon that, starting in 2022, deflated and took a back seat. Now, this sector faces 2024 with stability and growth among its main goals.
One of the most controversial aspects of the blockchain world was in Non-Fungible Tokens, or as they were popularly known, NFTs, which were tried to be portrayed as speculative pieces with potential future value. However, as anticipated, the oversupply sank the value of the vast majority of these NFTs.
The NFTs flooded the market and devalued themselves unknowingly.
As a result, nowadays, the crypto market has a more negative social perception than years ago. Will the crypto fever recover in the future, once NFTs fade into the collective memory? It’s still early to find out, but in a few years, we’ll discover where the cryptocurrency market is heading.
