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Dogecoin dumps following mention from Elon Musk on Saturday Night Live

Meme cryptocurrency Dogecoin finally got its long-awaited shoutout on Saturday Night Live — but despite hodler hopes, the immediate result has been a violent dump.

First teased by entrepreneur and DOGE cheerleader Elon Musk in late April, the Tesla CEO finally mentioned the digital asset on live television tonight in his opening monologue of the sketch comedy show. The reference was a throwaway line from Musk’s mother, who joined him onstage and asked if her Mother’s Day gift would be Dogecoin; Musk replied that it would be. 

In the minutes afterwards, $DOGE dumped upwards of 25%, falling as low as $.50 from $.66 highs at the start of the show. It has since partially recovered, trading at $.52 at the time of publication.

An hour before the episode began, the price of DOGE sat at $.66, down from an all-time high of $.72. A pair of bearish headwinds may have shared responsibility for the pullback: Musk himself seemed to try and get ahead of the hype, urging followers in a Tweet to “invest with caution,” and a host of new data indicates that many investors may be rolling their DOGE profits into other, largecap digital assets. 

Additionally, Barry Silbert — the founder and CEO of Digital Currency Group, the parent company of crypto investment vehicle company Grayscale — announced a public short on DOGE via the FTX exchange. In a series of follow-up Tweets, he revealed that the position was $1 million in size, and that any proceeds or remaining funds after closing the short would be donated to charity. 

(It’s unclear if Silbert was is using “we” in reference to Digital Currency Group, one of its portfolio companies, or is simply and bizarrely using a plural pronoun in reference to himself). 

Many DOGE investors were nonetheless holding out hope for a high-profile shoutout on what looked to be a major pop culture event. NBC, the studio behind SNL, chose for the first time ever to live-stream the episode on Youtube, per the Wall Street Journal.

Even a mention could have significant impact on the price of DOGE as well: the meme currency has proven to be susceptible to price movements based on positive social media volume, and multiple studies have shown that Tweets from Musk often lead to price appreciation. A mention on an even bigger platform was thought to potentially lead to even greater gains. 

Leading into the premier of the episode, Alameda Research trader Sam Trabucco (who said in a previous Tweet that he was “studying the typical SNL episode structure to try and understand when a DOGE mention would be the most natural”) speculated that if a joke or mention didn’t come in Musk’s opening monologue, it would be “all over.”

Despite arriving during the monologue, traders nonetheless responded negatively. It remains to be seen if a DOGE-centric skit later in the show can perhaps turn the speculative asset’s fortunes around.

Dogecoin dumps following mention from Elon Musk on Saturday Night Live

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Reeling from post-hack price slump, Easyfi reveals community compensation plan

After a devastating hack, a cross-chain decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol has revealed today a temporary compensation plan for token holders and investors impacted by one of the largest exploits in DeFi history. 

In a Tweet today, EasyFi announced their “Interim Compensation Plan,” a multi-stage process that includes immediate payments, IOU tokens, and incentive programs aimed at victims of the attack.

The hack, which took place 19 April, is considered to be among the largest in DeFi history, with $6 million in stablecoins and 2.98 million EZ tokens worth upwards of $120 million lost at the time of the attack. The hacker was in a complicated position, however, as after exploiting the protocol they owned upwards of 30% of the supply of EZ tokens and there was limited liquidity with which to unload them. The token “hardforked” to EZ 2.0 a week later, rendering the attacker’s remaining tokens effectively worthless. 

In a Tweet from his personal account, EasyFi founder Ankitt Gaur confirmed that the hack was the result of a “targeted attack on the founder’s machine/metamask to access admin keys and execute the well-planned hack.” This attack vector bears similarities to a 2020 hack on the personal computer of Hugh Karp, the founder of Nexus Mutual, who lost $8 million.

An expert from hack and exploit publication Rekt noted that the theft may have been the result of lax security practices, in that a single individual was in possession of the keys to the treasury, as opposed to being secured in a wallet with precautions against this type of hack such as a multisignature scheme or timelocked transactions.

In their compensation plan blog post, EasyFi characterizes the attack as “well-planned” and “sophisticated.”

Regardless of the cause, the efforts to compensate victims is multifaceted. Per their post, 25% of lost funds will be distributed to users “immediately” in the form of stablecoins, while the remaining 75% will be distributed as “IOU” tokens. The IOU tokens will have “25% discount on spot price of EZ at the time of distribution,” and be redeemable for EZ v2 tokens on a 1-to-1 basis. Hack victims will also reportedly be the recipients of future airdrops from unspecified partners and have access to other incentivized programs still in development. 

The post also noted that the protocol has worked to attract new venture capital via an “accelerated” fundraising round following the hack — a round that is still ongoing.

The token is down 4.7% today to $11.30, and down 33.8% on the week — still reeling from both the hack, as well as from compensated investors possibly cashing in their IOUs.

Compensation methods are an increasingly hot topic as hacks and exploits continue to plague DeFi. EasyFi’s multifaceted approach mirrors that of Origin Dollar’s, while other protocols have opted for creative cross-platform treasury magic to mitigate attacks in recent months.

Reeling from post-hack price slump, Easyfi reveals community compensation plan

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Philippines based Digital Bank Tonik Reports $20M+ in Deposits in Less than A Month After Launch, Announces Partnership with PESONet

Earlier this week, Philippines based digital bank Tonik partnered with PESONet in order to support safe and secure digital fund transfers to its account from other banking service providers.

Tonik clients now have the option to send money from a PESONet participating bank directly to their bank accounts.

This new service is currently available through CIMB, PSBank, Landbank, and RCBC. Other PESONet member banks are expected to add the service in the foreseeable future.

As mentioned in the announcement, interbank transfer services through PESONet will be available with more banks within the next few weeks.

The announcement has come shortly after Tonik’s official launch in March 2021. The digital bank revealed that it has managed to secure more than 1 billion pesos ($ 20 million) in retail deposits in less than a month.

Tonik’s management also mentioned that they intend to introduce their loan offers and further expand their payment options during this year.

Greg Krasnov, CEO and Founder at Tonik, remarked:

“The response we got when we introduced the app last month was overwhelmingly positive. It’s a testament to the fact that Filipinos are thirsty for a financial enabler that cuts the red tape, makes banking less complicated, and lets their hard-earned money work better for their future. Allowing easier and bigger interbank transfers to Tonik accounts through PESONet is just one of several features that we are introducing in our app that I’m sure will make our customers love us more.”

Long Pineda, President at Tonik Digital Bank, Inc, stated:

“This is another chapter in our journey of growth and driving financial inclusion in the local banking industry. By making in-demand banking transactions such as interbank transfers safer and more seamless with PESONet, we hope to encourage more Filipinos to manage and maximize their finances with Tonik in the #neonormal.”

As covered, Tonik had started working with several companies in 2020 so it would be ready for a successful launch. After acquiring $6 million in capital in early 2020, Tonik chose Singapore’s online security firm V-Key as its mobile security partner.

As reported in July 2020, Tonik had selected Mastercard as its payments partner.

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Ocean Protocol Reveals that its Market Now Features Compute-to-Data, a Privacy Preserving Way to Exchange Data

The developers at Ocean Protocol (OCEAN), which allows software engineers to build marketplaces and other apps to privately and securely publish, exchange, and consume data, have revealed that Compute-to-Data has landed in the Ocean Market.

According to the Ocean Protocol team, Compute-to-Data “enables buying and selling of private data while preserving privacy.” As explained in the update, this “resolves the tradeoff between the benefits of using private data and the risks of exposing it.”

As mentioned in the announcement:

“With Compute-to-Data, data never leaves its owner’s premises. Data owners can monetize data while preserving privacy and control, yet data buyers can create value from it with analytics, AI modeling and more. All via the Ocean Market interface.”

Some of the Compute-to-Data benefits that AI practitioners can take advantage of:

  • They can “access valuable, private data that was previously unavailable, which can lead to more accurate AI models. And without liability – they don’t see the data.”
  • They can also “publish and monetize algorithms” and can “even stay private.”

Businesses and entrepreneurs are able to quickly launch their own Ocean-powered data marketplace for their particular vertical. Ocean Compute-to-Data assists them with “further preserving their sellers’ privacy and support more compute and AI flows.”

Compute-to-Data in Ocean Market is “a major milestone in our 2021 roadmap & a big step towards our vision of data as a new asset class,” the update noted.

As reported in February 2021, Ocean Protocol had announced the second round of OceanDAO (distributed autonomous organization or DAO) grant results.

The developers at Ocean Protocol, who are focused on building the new data economy, confirmed that the OceanDAO Round Two has officially concluded (on February 5, 2021).

For people who might not be familiar with OceanDAO, it’s a grants DAO that’s curated by the Ocean community, for “growth and long-term sustainability” (more details here).

Ocean Protocol noted in a blog post that proposal submissions for OceanDAO Round Three had been “officially open.” And last month, the OceanDAO — Round Three Grant results were announced.

As mentioned in the update, OceanDAO Rounds are “monthly, with project proposals due on the first of every month.” During Round Two, the top 9 highest-voted grant proposals from the “snapshot ballot” were chosen to receive 10,000 OCEAN (valued at just over $9,100 in February of this year) in order to “foster positive value creation for the overall OCEAN ecosystem.”

The Ocean ecosystem “becomes self-sustainable” as the Web 3.0 (an evolving set of standards for the Internet of the future) data economy builders leverage Ocean Protocol to develop products, services, and resources that the community may find useful or valuable.

As covered in January 2021, Ocean Protocol Founder Bruce Pon had explained how crypto became a reliable asset class and store of value in 2020.

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Your future at stake: Uni of Wyoming allocates $4M to staking three coins

The University of Wyoming is allocating $4 million to running nodes and staking at least three cryptocurrencies.

The news was shared to Twitter on April 28 by Caitlin Long, a Wyoming Blockchain and Fintech Select Committee appointee and founder of Avanti Bank & Trust — a local bank servicing the digital asset sector.

The documentation posted by Long notes the University appropriated $4 million from the state’s strategic investments and projects fund to establish, operate, and maintain “nodes and staking pools for no less than three publicly tradable cryptocurrencies.”

The revenues generated by the University’s staking pools will first be mobilized to cover operational costs, and then to repay the $4 million to the state’s investment fund. Once the investment has been repaid, profits from the University’s staking will be distributed “to support blockchain programs and activities at the university and community colleges throughout the state.”

The expenditure of profits generated through staking is conditional on the University matching every $1 appropriated from the investment fund with at least $2 in either private donations or from the campus’ reserve accounts.

Chris Rothfuss, the senate minority leader of the Wyoming Legislature and Chairman of the state’s Blockchain and Fintech Select Committee, praised the committee’s “herculean effort” in getting the legislation passed.

Many Twitter users have responded to Long’s post with speculation that Cardano (ADA) may be one of the assets the University is intending to stake.

One commenter shared a link to information on a staking pool identified by CardanoStaking.info as being operated by the University of Wyoming’s Advanced Blockchain Lab. As of this writing, the pool has minted less than 10 blocks, and has pledged roughly $60,000 worth of ADA.

In February 2020, IOHK, the company behind Cardano, donated $500,000 worth of ADA to the university’s blockchain lab to advance its research.

Your future at stake: Uni of Wyoming allocates $4M to staking three coins

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