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Dogecoin nears 75 cents, then slips as crypto pioneer Silbert seen betting against parody coin ahead of Elon Musk’s ‘SNL’ guest-host gig
Call it the “dogefather” versus the godfather of crypto.
Barry Silbert, a power player in the digital-asset sector, said he’s betting against dogecoin DOGEUSD, +0.32% and is urging investors in one of the hottest trades in 2021 to convert their doge holdings into bitcoin BTCUSD, +0.51% .
The missive from Silbert comes as the chief executive of Tesla Inc. TSLA, +1.33% and SpaceX and one of dogecoin’s most vocal champions, Elon Musk, is set to guest host NBC’s late night comedy sketch show “Saturday Night Live.”
Check out: As dogecoin price tops 60 cents, Elon Musk says ‘please invest with caution’ ahead of ‘Saturday Night Live’ guest-host gig
Fans of dogecoin are hopeful that the Tesla CEO may offer a bullish word or two on the doge, which was created in 2013 as a lighthearted riff on bitcoin, but has now taken on different significance amid a nearly 14,000% surge in value in 2021.
At last check Saturday evening, dogecoin was changing hands at 63.9 cents on CoinDesk, off about 14% from its 24-hour peak at 74.08 cents.
Some view the asset as the perfect example of an asset bubble.
Musk, however, on April 28 declared himself the dogefather, ahead of the ‘SNL’ spot.
Dogecoin’s moves have been primarily pegged to Musk’s comments in social media, in recent weeks and months.
Silbert is considered a luminary in the world of digital assets, after founding two of the most widely known enterprises in crypto: Grayscale Investments, which runs the popular Grayscale Bitcoin Trust GBTC, +3.71% ; and the Digital Currency Group, which also owns CoinDesk. He’s also been an early investor in companies like trading platform Coinbase Global COIN, +2.70% and Ripple, a blockchain-focused startup behind the cryptocurrency XRP XRPUSD, +1.64% . CoinTelegraph ranks Silbert as the No. 5 most important person in decentralized digital assets.
Read: Dogecoin price’s ‘make-or-break’ moment looms with Elon Musk set to host ‘Saturday Night Live’
Silbert’s tweet effectively creates a face-off between billionaire investors.
Musk boasts a networth of $166 billion, while the DCG founder’s networth is $1.6 billion, according to Forbes.
Doge devotees have very publicly set a target of $1 for the coin in 2021, a number that might seem extremely modest at first glance but not when viewed through the lens that Doge traded at $0.005 on the final day of 2020.
Even more bullish dogecoin holders, view their price targets at $5 and beyond.
Interest in dogecoin can’t really be overstated. In Google trends over the past week, it has eclipsed searches for COVID and coronavirus and Elon Musk’s appearance on “Saturday Night Live” is trending on Twitter.
So far, the meme currency has enjoyed a spectacular ride compared against most other assets. Gold futures GC00, +0.04% are down 3% so far this year, the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.66% and the S&P 500 index SPX, +0.74% are up by nearly 13% in 2021, while the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, +0.88% has gained about over 6% so far this year.
However, even Musk offered a note of warning on Friday, suggesting that investors buy cautiously.
Crypto analyst who nailed ethereum’s climb to $3,400 says $10,000 is next
Back in January, when the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, ethereum, was trading at just over $1,200, one investor made the bold call of predicting a spike to the mid-$3,000 level, claiming it was being “overlooked” by investors.
Just under five months later, that prediction has already hit with ethereum (ETH-USD) up roughly 400% on the year to cross the $3,500 mark as of Friday afternoon. Now, that same investor, Megan Kaspar, co-founder of the digital asset investment company Magnetic, is upping her price target to the $8,000 to $10,000 price range by year’s end.
Kaspar explained her thesis Friday on Yahoo Finance Live, citing new updates coming to the cryptocurrency’s network later this year. The network is planning a shift away from the same method used by bitcoin (BTC-USD) to confirm transactions to one that is far less energy intensive. Unlike bitcoin’s so-called proof of work, which rewards miners who are competing against each other to use computers and energy to record and confirm transactions on its blockchain, ethereum plans to adopt the more efficient proof of stake model, which chooses a block validator at random based on how much ether it controls.
“The shift to proof of stake for block validation reduces carbon emissions by 99.9%, making ethereum a green technology,” Kaspar explained. “So these two updates on the network alone could push ethereum to a trillion dollar market cap which is where bitcoin is at today — that would make ethereum around $8,000 to $10,000 a coin.”
Ether has outperformed bitcoin year-to-date. The former is up nearly 380%, while bitcoin is up about 90% over the same time period.
As high as Kaspar’s price target sounds, which implies about 300% upside from current levels, it matches the $10,500 price target that came from Fundstrat Global Advisors earlier this year. Analysts there calculated their price target from rising activity on the ethereum network as more and more decentralized applications continue to be built on it. Decentralized finance applications, which allow users to earn yield on their crypto assets similar to the way they would at a traditional bank, have seen usage on the network explode from $10 billion in September 2020 to more than $65 billion as of April.
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After the network changes are implemented, Kaspar also believes a greener ethereum will begin to attract more institutional attention relative to bitcoin. Miners in China account for well over half of all the mining power on the network and investors like Kevin O’Leary of “Shark Tank” have increasingly taken issue with that connection. Kaspar says as more investors take note in the years to come, institutional dollars could propel ethereum to $100,000.
“Institutions are mandating that they invest in clean green technologies and that’s what ethereum is becoming,” she said. “Unfortunately, bitcoin’s proof of work network will not be that unless they choose to shift as well.”
Nonetheless, Kaspar still sees upside for bitcoin, predicting the world’s largest cryptocurrency could hit $200,000 by the end of the year. On Friday, bitcoin was trading at over $57,700 a coin. Pantera Capital CEO Dan Morehead expressed a similar level of confidence for bitcoin’s upside with his $115,000 price target by August, citing his model that tracks bitcoin like a commodity.
As he explained to Yahoo Finance earlier this week, “stock-to-flow” models measure existing supplies, usually of commodities, against the flow at which new inventory is produced. In the case of bitcoin mining, that flow in the form of mining rewards is cut in half roughly every four years. When applying the measure to bitcoin over the last year, Morehead has shown bitcoin’s price has moved in lockstep with projections.
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“When people say, ‘Oh this is crazy,’ I push back. I don’t think this is crazy. I’ve been doing this for 10 years, it’s actually very predictable,” he said.
Zack Guzman is an anchor for Yahoo Finance Live as well as a senior writer covering entrepreneurship, crypto, cannabis, startups, and breaking news at Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter @zGuz.
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