Net Detectives Wonder if This DOGE Whale Is Actually Elon Musk
Internet sleuths are speculating that arch crypto trickster and the world’s richest man – the Tesla and SpaceX supremo Elon Musk – may be the secret owner of a crypto wallet crammed to brim with the token du jour: dogecoin (DOGE).
Source: AdobeStock / Galacticus
The meme-based token has recently rocketed into the top 10 per market cap thanks to a coordinated pump, and much talk on social media platforms is now centering on a single wallet that holds a cool DOGE 34.9 billion, some 27% of the current total supply of the coin – now worth a cool USD 1.2 billion.
But after Musk had stoked the flames of bitcoiners’ fervor by adding bitcoin (BTC) to his Twitter profile in late January, he promptly executed a volte-face yesterday – removing bitcoin references and posting a series of DOGE-related memes and calling the token “the people’s” token, turning the market on its head.
But as the crypto world asks itself if Musk is trolling it or if the Tesla chief really is serious about crypto, redditors have been playing Sherlock Holmes, hunting for clues in the wallet’s transaction history.
One pointed out that Musk’s birthday, June 28, 1971 (06281971), is frequently used in transaction amounts on the account – an indication that it could perhaps be Musk, using the account to “shill his bags” with a DOGE pump.
Another claimed that the authorities would likely clamp down hard on Musk – who has already had brush-ins with regulators in the United States – if he were indeed proven to be behind the pump. Market manipulation on any asset (even a meme-based token) would likely land an individual of Musk’s profile squarely in hot water.
Another still opined,
“I think Elon is smart enough to not put his birthday as one of his transaction amounts. This is probably a troll with a ton of DOGE that might want to make a killing.”
The original poster also opined that Musk, who has previously indicated, per The Verge back in 2017, that he is a fan of leetspeak number-themed gags including numbers like 1337 and 69 – and that these numbers also feature in the wallet’s transaction history.
Musk also famously smoked cannabis on a podcast hosted by Joe Rogan back in 2018, and the number 420 also appears frequently in the transaction records. The number is often used as shorthand for marijuana smoking in the United States.
The transaction history also shows that the wallet holder – be they Musk or someone else – got into DOGE relatively recently, with the first recorded DOGE move on the account dating back to February 2019.
In a tweet, the Binance chief Changpeng “CZ” Zhao called Musk dogecoin’s “PR manager,” and claimed that the token was currently both “centralized” – in that one wallet controls such a huge chunk of its market cap – and “decentralized,” due to the fact that the token has “no core team.”
DOGE fans have been speculating on the ownership of the wallet for over a year, with one user writing in 2020 that they “wanted” the token to belong to Musk, while another claimed,
“Most of the top addresses account for hot wallets, cold wallets, long term platform storage and the migration of assets generally userfunds related.”
Musk has been engaging al all manners of crypto-themed Twitter horseplay in recent times.
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Learn more:
Musk’s Doge, Bitcoin Tweets May Spur Double-Digit Returns – Report
Elon Musk Lights Dogecoin Candle Again, Removes Bitcoin From Twitter Profile
Dogecoin Blasts Into Top 10, And Leaves
This is Why Dogecoin is Better than ‘Altcoins-Degenerators’
