illionaire and meme fan Elon Musk points out the impact of internet in-jokes on digital investments, which even traditional investment funds are playing by. — REUTERS
No one can bring together a bunch of different memes like Elon Musk.
Late on Sunday, the Tesla Inc. CEO and internet provocateur tweeted: There’s a tendency to dismiss a lot of memes – such as the obsession with funny numbers like 420 and 69 – as total nonsense. But there’s more and more evidence that they’re actually starting to matter for institutional traders and investment.
Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto-exchange FTX, for instance, recently raised US$420mil (RM1.74bil) in funding from 69 investors including serious players like Singapore’s gigantic state investment company Temasek and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board.
Viewed in the context of internet jokes, Bitcoin’s record high of around US$69,000 (RM286,936) makes sense.
Former Odd Lots guest and Spectra Markets trader Brent Donnelly has encouraged crypto traders to embrace the nonsense and factor in the meme world's love of silly and also big round numbers into their strategy. Looking at transaction level data from Gemini, he shows that Bitcoin’s highs and lows are much more likely to fall on round numbers, or those with a ‘00’ or ‘50’ in their last two digits.
He also finds a slight bias towards ‘420,’ though it’s not yet big enough to be statistically significant.
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