An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Facebook's mission is to "bring the world closer together." Increasingly, that's about not just connecting friends and family to share messages, but also serving as a platform for people's financial lives. Some $100 billion in payments have been enabled by Facebook over the past year, said David Marcus, who runs the company's financial services unit. But that's just the start of the social network's ambitions in the finance industry, Mr. Marcus writes in a new memo about the country's "broken" payments system, reported in the DealBook newsletter.

At the center of Facebook's push into payments is Novi, a digital wallet intended for users to move money around the world quickly and cheaply (free, in many cases). The company had a plan to pair it with a "stablecoin" cryptocurrency called Libra, but that was shelved amid regulatory scrutiny, and now the scaled-back project, known as Diem, is overseen by an outside nonprofit group seeking the necessary government approvals. In recounting some of Facebook's setbacks in trying to break into the crypto payments industry, Mr. Marcus describes the tech giant, the subject of antitrust inquiries around the world, as an underdog. Facebook faces unfair resistance in the financial industry, he wrote. "I've heard multiple conversations about how this proposal would be so great if only Facebook wasn't involved," he said. "I understand and accept the need for extra scrutiny due to our scale." But Mr. Marcus describes Facebook as a "challenger in the payments industry," with no specific plan yet to monetize use of the Novi wallet, which won't charge for person-to-person payments, even across borders.

He added that allowing users to pay with dollars, euros and other fiat currencies via the Novi wallet would bring a lot of value. "So why not just do that and call it a day?" he wrote. "Well, we might." But before deciding on that, he doesn't want to "waste our shot" at incorporating stablecoins into an "open, interoperable protocol" for online payments. "To have the maximum impact, building a closed system using fiat only wasn't going to cut it," he said in the memo. Mr. Marcus believes that a well-designed stablecoin pegged to a fiat currency, backed one to one in cash reserves, could offer strong consumer protections. It would also provide quicker access to funds than traditional bank accounts. "We will continue to persevere and demonstrate we can be a trusted player in this industry," he wrote, adding that the Novi wallet has licenses or approvals in nearly every U.S. state and that the Diem stablecoin project "has addressed every legitimate concern." Facebook's digital wallet is ready to come to market, Mr. Marcus said, and "we deserve a fair shot." To judge by Facebook's difficulties getting to this point, regulators remain to be convinced.

Walmart is looking to hire a cryptocurrency expert to develop a blockchain strategy, joining a growing number of major corporations exploring the viability of digital currencies such as Bitcoin. From a report: The position will be responsible for "developing the digital currency strategy and product roadmap" and identifying "crypto-related investment and partnerships," according to a job posting Sunday on the retail giant's website. The senior director will be based in Walmart's corporate offices in Bentonville, Arkansas.

While Walmart's specific intentions weren't immediately clear, the job description refers to the "broad set of payment options for its customers" in stores and online. The company didn't immediately respond to a request for additional information. The recruitment effort by Walmart comes several weeks after a similar job posting by rival Amazon.com, indicating that the biggest retailers in the U.S. may soon let customers use cryptocurrencies to pay for their purchases. PayPal Holdings began letting select customers of its Venmo app buy, sell and hold digital currencies earlier this year and expanded the effort last week.

While some bitcoin mining operations are now looking to nuclear power, the Associated Press reports, Bill Spence (and his company Stronghold Digital Mining) is creating crypto-mining hubs out of waste coal power plants. (Text-only version here): The plant he had bought was in trouble. It was competing with cheap natural gas on the power grid and losing — endangering the 35 jobs at Scrubgrass Generating Station along with the effort to clean up millions of tons of leaching coal waste left behind by mining companies over the course of decades. The plant couldn't just rely on the grid for revenue anymore, because the grid simply didn't need its power all that often. Mr. Spence started to look for other customers...

Already, some power generators — finding they can make more money supplying electricity to Bitcoin-mining operations than selling it to the grid — are shifting focus. Energy Harbor, which owns the Beaver Valley Nuclear Plant in Beaver County, announced earlier this month that it will supply nuclear power to a Bitcoin-mining data center in Ohio. Talen Energy, owner of the Susquehanna Steam Electric Station in Luzerne County, is doing the same. The company said last month that it will develop a data center to mine digital currency that could use up to 300 megawatts, or 12% of the nuclear plant's capacity. Bitcoin miners, in turn, are hyper cognizant of power prices and availability. Some are taking mobile units into the oil fields, hooking up their machines to run on natural gas, a byproduct of oil product that would otherwise be flared...

Today, Scrubgrass, an 85-megawatt blue box with a black smokestack in the hills of Scrubgrass Township, looks much like it did when it first opened in 1993 — except for the trailers filled with Bitcoin miners in the back... [T]here are about 3,000 cryptocurrency miners packed into retrofitted shipping containers behind the power plant, most of them owned by Stronghold and some that belong to other mining companies that buy power from the plant. Another 5,000 machines are scheduled to arrive next month. According to documents filed with the SEC, Stronghold is planning to operate 57,000 miners by the end of next year. In 2020, when the power plant seldom ran, Stronghold made more money from its Bitcoin operations than by selling Scrubgrass's energy to the grid. During the first three months of this year, the trend reversed. It received almost $2 million from power sales and more than $1 million from its crypto datacenter...

Stronghold is buying another waste coal plant, Panther Creek Energy Facility in Carbon County, with plans to replicate its cryptomining data center there, and is eyeing a third.
The Associated Press notes that the waste-coal plants are powered by those thousands of acres of abandoned (and pollutant-emitting) coal piles left behind by earlier coal-powered plants, finally remediating them into reclaimable land. But with waste coal plants, there's always a trade-off.

"In 2019, the last year with available federal data, Scrubgrass emitted the equivalent of 371,000 tons of CO2 — the greenhouse gas footprint of 80,000 cars driving for a year."

The U.S. government regularly holds auctions for its stockpile of bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin and other cryptocurrencies it seizes and then holds in crypto wallets. "In fiscal year 2019, we had about $700,000 worth of crypto seizures. In 2020, it was up to $137 million. And so far in 2021, we're at $1.2 billion," said Jarod Koopman, director of the IRS' cybercrime unit. CNBC reports: As cybercrime picks up -- and the haul of digital tokens along with it -- government crypto coffers are expected to swell even further. Interviews with current and former federal agents and prosecutors suggest the U.S. has no plans to step back from its side hustle as a crypto broker. The crypto seizure and sale operation is growing so fast that the government just enlisted the help of the private sector to manage the storage and sales of its hoard of crypto tokens.
[...]
Once a case is closed and the crypto has been exchanged for fiat currency, the feds then divvy the spoils. The proceeds of the sale are typically deposited into one of two funds: The Treasury Forfeiture Fund or the Department of Justice Assets Forfeiture Fund. "The underlying investigative agency determines which fund the money goes to," said [Sharon Cohen Levin, who worked on the first Silk Road prosecution and spent 20 years as chief of the money laundering and asset forfeiture unit in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York]. Koopman said the crypto traced and seized by his team accounts for roughly 60% to 70% of the Treasury Forfeiture Fund, making it the largest individual contributor.

Once placed into one of these two funds, the liquidated crypto can then be put toward a variety of line items. Congress, for example, can rescind the money and put that cash toward funding projects. "Agencies can put in requests to gain access to some of that money for funding of operations," said Koopman. "We're able to put in a request and say, "We're looking for additional licenses or additional gear,' and then that's reviewed by the Executive Office of Treasury." Some years, Koopman's team receives varying amounts based on the initiatives proposed. Other years, they get nothing because Congress will choose to rescind all the money out of the account.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CoinDesk: Mastercard has named the first stablecoin and a handful of partner companies that will help cryptocurrency holders spend their digital assets at merchants that accept the payment giant's cards. In the pilot announced Tuesday, Circle's USDC will serve as a bridge between the cryptocurrency in consumers' digital wallets and the fiat currency paid to merchants. USDC is a digital token that almost always trades at $1 because the issuer promises to redeem it 1-for-1 with greenbacks at any time.

While it might sound like adding an extra step, swapping a cryptocurrency for a stablecoin and then exchanging the stablecoin for dollars can be quicker or simpler than going directly from crypto to fiat. For example, some cryptos cannot be easily traded on an exchange for dollars but can be for USDC. Adding this way station will assist cryptocurrency firms that want to offer Mastercard-branded products to their customers, the company said. "Today not all crypto companies have the foundational infrastructure to convert cryptocurrency to traditional fiat currency, and we're making it easier," said Raj Dhamodharan, Mastercard's executive vice president of digital asset and blockchain products, in a press release. The announcement, five months after Mastercard said it planned to bring select stablecoins into its network, was framed as a step toward that eventual goal.

This week Dogecoin co-creator Jackson Palmer addressed the question of whether he'd return to cryptocurrency.

"My answer is a wholehearted 'no'," he confirmed, before launching into a scathing Tweet storm. "To avoid repeating myself I figure it might be worthwhile briefly explaining why hereâ¦" "After years of studying it, I believe that cryptocurrency is an inherently right-wing, hyper-capitalistic technology built primarily to amplify the wealth of its proponents through a combination of tax avoidance, diminished regulatory oversight and artificially enforced scarcity. Despite claims of 'decentralization', the cryptocurrency industry is controlled by a powerful cartel of wealthy figures who, with time, have evolved to incorporate many of the same institutions tied to the existing centralized financial system they supposedly set out to replace.

"The cryptocurrency industry leverages a network of shady business connections, bought influencers and pay-for-play media outlets to perpetuate a cult-like 'get rich quick' funnel designed to extract new money from the financially desperate and naive. Financial exploitation undoubtedly existed before cryptocurrency, but cryptocurrency is almost purpose built to make the funnel of profiteering more efficient for those at the top and less safeguarded for the vulnerable. Cryptocurrency is like taking the worst parts of today's capitalist system (eg. corruption, fraud, inequality) and using software to technically limit the use of interventions (eg. audits, regulation, taxation) which serve as protections or safety nets for the average person...

"I applaud those with the energy to continue asking the hard questions and applying the lens of rigorous skepticism all technology should be subject to. New technology can make the world a better place, but not when decoupled from its inherent politics or societal consequences."
Insider points out this wasn't Palmer's first time speaking out against crypto. "When Dogecoin soared to $2 billion in 2018, he wrote an op-ed on Vice, saying 'something is very wrong.'" Palmer and his co-founder, Billy Markus, created Dogecoin in 2013 as a "joke" currency as alternative cryptocurrencies flooded the market, promising to be the next big thing... It is now valued at $25.8 billion, as of time of writing.

Palmer and Markus are no longer part of Dogecoin. Both left in 2015 after deciding that the cryptocurrency was not aligned with their values. Palmer's co-creator, Markus, retweeted Palmer's Twitter thread and responded with a GIF.
In a later tweet, Markus added that "I think his points are generally valid aside from the pointless American politics piece."

The Guardian's UK/US site editor in the Asia Pacific timezone argues that China wants to undermine bitcoin because, behind the scenes, its reserve bank wants to set up its own digital currency — and then reboot the international financial system: The People's Bank of China aims to become the first major central bank to issue a central bank digital currency. While the PBOC's counterparts in the west have taken a more cautious approach, it has held trials in several major cities including Shenzhen, Chengdu, Shanghai and Hangzhou. The benefits of an e-currency are immense. As more and more transactions are made using a digital currency controlled centrally, the government gains more and more ability to monitor the economy and its people.

The rollout is also seen as part of Beijing's push to weaken the power of the U.S. dollar, and in turn that of the government in Washington... Alarm in western governments is such that the threat posed by the digital yuan, which could put China out of reach from international financial sanctions, for example, was discussed at last month's G7 meeting.
There's additional reasons for China's desire to replace bitcoin with its own currency, various experts tell the site. No central bank relishes the thought of a "parallel currency" — and there's also concerns about consumers being hurt by a lack of regulations, as well as the strain crypto-mining puts on the nation's electricity system. But the Guardian also adds that "The threat of an unregulated alternative monetary system emerging from blockchain technology is a clear and present danger to the Communist party, according to observers."

"Jim Cramer, a former hedge fund manager and CNN business expert, said the government in Beijing "believe it's a direct threat to the regime because... it is outside their control".

Billionaire bitcoin owner Mircea Popescu has reportedly died, leaving behind a cache of virtual currency and a controversial crypto legacy. MarketWatch reports: The bitcoin pioneer, who was believed to own over $1 billion in the world's No. 1 crypto, making him, at the time, one of the asset's larger single-holders, died off the coast of Costa Rica, according to a Spanish-language publication, Teletica.com, which reported last week that a foreigner had drowned at Playa Hermosa de Garabito, Puntarenas in Costa Rica, describing him as a 41-year old of Polish origin. Popescu was viewed as a pioneer in digital assets and one of the earliest adopters. An article in Bitcoin Magazine written by Pete Rizzo said that Popescu was known for starting MPEx, a Bitcoin securities exchange, around the same time as the Coinbase Global launched. At its mid-April peak this year, Popescu's bitcoin holdings would have been worth nearly $2 billion. Further reading: Bitcoin Magazine, Coinspeaker

Millions of Americans received stimulus checks in the past year, but Salvadoreans will be soon be receiving one paid in Bitcoin. From a report: The Central American country will give U.S. $30 worth of Bitcoin to each adult citizen that downloads and registers on the country's new cryptocurrency app, Chivo, President Nayib Bukele said during a televised speech Thursday. The $30 promotion is the nation's latest effort to push adoption of Bitcoin as legal currency. Bukele announced via video at the Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami earlier this month that he would be introducing legislation to make Bitcoin legal tender. His "Bitcoin Law" goes into effect on Sept. 7.

"This law is made to generate employment, to generate investments, and at no moment will it affect anybody, like opponents have tried to say with their dirty campaign," Bukele said during the hour-long speech Thursday. Chivo, the crypto wallet whose name translates to "goat" in English, will be compatible with both dollars and Bitcoin, and will be available on both iOS and Android devices, Bukele said. Since former Salvadorean President Francisco Flores passed a 2001 dollarization law, the U.S. dollar has been the most used legal tender in the country.

Bloomberg Businessweek describes what happened when an anonymous donor started "seeding" the tiny El Salvadoran surfing village of El Zonte (population: 3,000) with Bitcoin, turning it into the world's biggest Bitcoin experiment. Workers now receive their salaries and pay bills in Bitcoin, tourists can buy pupusas with a special Bitcoin payment app, and community projects are financed with Bitcoin donations. According to Jorge Valenzuela, an upbeat 32-year-old surfing aficionado who leads the volunteers, "it has changed my town...." [T]he most striking thing these days is the orange "B" — the international symbol for Bitcoin — splashed on garbage cans, near the entrance of the dirt-floor pizza joint, and hanging on the wall near the surf shack at the beachfront hotel. The town has never had a bank. Now the lone ATM buys and sells Bitcoin... In El Zonte, Bitcoin is a possible solution to an actual problem, as opposed to a solution in search of a problem, which is how critics describe its role in, say, the U.S...

But it was the pandemic that ultimately jump-started the project. When El Salvador's tourism industry and El Zonte's economy collapsed, Michael Peterson started making monthly transfers of about $35 in Bitcoin to 500 families around town [on behalf of an anonymous donor]. He used Wallet of Satoshi, one of the many existing smartphone apps created for small transactions using Bitcoin, which is notoriously impractical — expensive and slow — for everyday purchases. As more stores began asking how they could accept Bitcoin, Peterson decided El Zonte needed its own app. The Bitcoin Beach Wallet, which launched in September, similarly uses technology that allows for small transactions. It shows users how much they hold in Bitcoin and greenbacks and where they can spend it. Shops in town price everything in dollars, whether the underlying transaction is in Bitcoin or not. A cappuccino always costs $3.50, even if Bitcoin's value has just jumped or dropped. In this way, it behaves more like a token than a currency...

He says that 18 months after the project launched, roughly 90% of El Zonte's households are interacting with the currency regularly. "It's crazy how fast Bitcoin has caught on," he says. Businesses are using it on their own to pay bills and accept payments. Residents use transfers to the Strike app, the ATM, and peer-to-peer transactions to move money back and forth between Bitcoin and cash... Many business owners say it makes up just a small fraction of sales. Although some 85% of families have access to smartphones, many still live in cramped houses with dirt floors and tin roofs. But for others, it's clearly been life-altering. A construction crew chief pays his dozen or so employees in Bitcoin. He was sick of losing them for a half-day every month so they could travel to the nearest bank, an hourlong bus ride away, on payday...

El Zonte is among the longest-running experiments of its kind, but it's still largely untested. "I'd be very interested in seeing what happens if we enter a bear market," says McCormack, the British podcaster. "If you're a shop owner and you have $50 a day in Bitcoin sales and all the sudden that goes up to $60, that's cool. But what happens when it starts going down to $40 or $30?"

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Global regulators have said cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin should come with the toughest bank capital rules to avoid putting the wider financial system at risk should their value collapse suddenly. The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, which consists of regulators from the world's leading financial centers, is proposing a "new conservative prudential treatment" for crypto-assets that would force banks to put aside enough capital to cover 100% of potential losses. That would be the highest capital requirement of any asset, illustrating that cryptocurrencies and related investments are seen as far more risky and volatile than conventional stocks or bonds.

The world's most powerful banking standards setter warned on Thursday that certain crypto-assets had proved to be highly volatile, meaning they could "present risks for banks as exposures increase, including liquidity risk; credit risk; market risk; operational risk (including fraud and cyber risks); money laundering/terrorist financing risk; and legal and reputation risks." However, it said looser rules could apply to stablecoins -- a new form of digital asset usually pegged to the value of a traditional currency -- that may require only a level of capital rules applied to traditional assets such as bonds, loans, deposits, equities or commodities. The committee's proposals, which will now go out for consultation, are meant to help protect the global financial system in case cryptocurrency prices plummet.

On Wednesday, crews were putting the final touches on the Bitcoin 2021 Convention, the world's largest-ever crypto-currency conference to be held this weekend at the Mana Convention Center in Wynwood. CBS4 Miami reports: Miami's crypto conference is expected to draw 50,000 people. The convention runs from Friday, June 4 through June 6th. The conference places Miami firmly in the landscape as the new Silicon Valley. "Miami is becoming the new capital of capital. It's becoming an innovative hub. It's becoming a tier 1 city of venture capital and innovation," said Brock Pierce. "A lot of the best and the brightest from Silicon Valley and New York have moved their businesses and their firms here." And Brock Pierce should know. He's the chairman of Bitcoin Foundation who has "mined" his way through the crypto world. Oh and by the way, he's a billionaire. "Mayor [Francis Suarez] has done an incredible job of saying 'come here, Miami is the place.' As a result of it, this has become the most important city in the United States," Pierce says.

An anonymous reader shares an opinion piece from Bloomberg, written by Timothy Massad: On Sept. 16, 2008, the day after Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, the Reserve Primary Fund "broke the buck": Its net asset value fell below $1 per share. The fund -- often called the first money-market fund -- held $785 million of Lehman commercial paper that was suddenly worthless. Although the paper represented only 1.2% of the fund's total assets of $64.8 billion, demands for withdrawals escalated, and the fund lost two-thirds of its assets within 24 hours. This triggered a general run on money-market funds that stopped only when the U.S. Treasury issued an extraordinary guarantee of essentially all money-market fund liabilities. The episode underscored how important that $1 net asset value is to investors.

Certain cryptocurrencies known as stablecoins are today's economic equivalent of money-market funds, and in some cases their practices should have us worried that they could break the buck, creating significant damage in the broader crypto market. One such stablecoin is Tether. With a market capitalization close to $60 billion, it is almost as big as the Reserve Fund was in 2008. Each Tether token is pegged to be equivalent to $1. But, as with the Reserve Primary Fund, the true value of those tokens depends on the market value of Tether's reserves -- the portfolio of investments made with the fiat currency it receives.

Tether recently disclosed that as of March 31, only 8% of its assets were in cash, Treasury bills and "reverse repo notes." Almost 50% was in commercial paper, but no detail was provided about its quality. "Fiduciary deposits" represented 18%. Even more troubling: 10% of total assets were in "corporate bonds, funds & precious metals," almost 13% were in "secured loans (none to affiliated entities)," and the remainder in "other," which includes digital tokens. Tether separately provided a report from the accounting firm Moore Cayman stating that Tether's assets exceed "the amount required to redeem" outstanding tokens. But that report provided no description of assets. It appeared to be based solely on management's accounting, noting that Tether's policy is to use "historic cost," and that "the realizable value of these assets ... could be materially different." These facts should put holders of Tether -- and other stablecoins -- on notice that they may have trouble getting back $1 for each token. "If some of Tether's investments were to become worthless or decline in value, it would suffer the equivalent fate of breaking the buck," says Massad. "And if, for any reason, a wave of Tether holders suddenly tried to convert their tokens to cash, we do not know whether Tether could liquidate sufficient investments quickly to satisfy the demand."

"In the niche world of customers for high-end semiconductors, a bitter feud is pitting bitcoin miners against hardcore gamers," reports Quartz: At issue is the latest line of NVIDIA graphics cards — powerful, cutting-edge chips with the computational might to display the most advanced video game graphics on the market. Gamers want the chips so they can experience ultra-realistic lighting effects in their favorite games. But they can't get their hands on NVIDIA cards, because miners are buying them up and adapting them to crunch cryptographic codes and harvest digital currency. The fierce competition to buy chips — combined with a global semiconductor shortage — has driven resale prices up as much as 300%, and led hundreds of thousands of desperate consumers to sign up for daily raffles for the right to buy chips at a significant mark-up.

To broker a peace between its warring customers, NVIDIA is, essentially, splitting its cutting-edge graphics chips into two dumbed-down products: GeForce for gamers and the Cryptocurrency Mining Processor (CMP) for miners. GeForce is the latest NVIDIA graphics card — except key parts of it have been slowed down to make it less valuable for miners racing to solve crypto puzzles. CMP is based on a slightly older version of NVIDIA's graphics card which has been stripped of all of its display outputs, so gamers can't use it to render graphics.

NVIDIA's goal in splitting its product offerings is to incentivize miners to only buy CMP chips, and leave the GeForce chips for the gamers. "What we hope is that the CMPs will satisfy the miners...[and] steer our GeForce supply to gamers," said CEO Jansen Huang on a May 26 conference call with investors and analysts... It won't be easy to keep the miners at bay, however. NVIDIA tried releasing slowed-down graphics chips in February in an effort to deter miners from buying them, but it didn't work. The miners quickly figured out how to hack the chips and make them perform at full-speed again.

A new Bitcoin Mining Council has been created to improve the crypto-currency's sustainability, following a meeting of "leading" Bitcoin miners and Elon Musk. The BBC reports: It's hoped the council will "promote energy usage transparency" and encourage miners to use renewable sources. According to a tweet by MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor, who convened the meeting of the group and Elon Musk, the council includes "the leading Bitcoin miners in North America." But research from a group of universities suggested that China accounted for more than 75% of Bitcoin mining as of April 2020. The authors estimated that 40% of China's Bitcoin mines were powered by coal.

[T]he group needs to do more than "disclosing and promoting the use of renewables," Alex de Vries of the website Digiconomist told the BBC. "Even if we had disclosure, that doesn't change the natural incentive of these miners to search out the cheapest and most constant sources of power - which typically comes down to (obsolete) fossil fuels," he said. "Kentucky even came up with a tax break for Bitcoin miners to come and use their obsolete coalfields. So, I'm not seeing this trend towards more renewables." However council member Peter Wall, Chief Executive of Argo, argued that increasingly US Bitcoin miners were choosing renewable power. He felt the council could encourage change."It's early days, it's embryonic. There will be lots of discussions moving forward about the best way to promote sustainable Bitcoin mining and to do it not just in North America," he said.

China has banned financial institutions and payment companies from providing services related to cryptocurrency transactions, and warned investors against speculative crypto trading. From a report: Under the ban, such institutions, including banks and online payments channels, must not offer clients any service involving cryptocurrency, such as registration, trading, clearing and settlement, three industry bodies said in a joint statement on Tuesday. "Recently, crypto currency prices have skyrocketed and plummeted, and speculative trading of cryptocurrency has rebounded, seriously infringing on the safety of people's property and disrupting the normal economic and financial order," they said in the statement. China has banned crypto exchanges and initial coin offerings but has not barred individuals from holding cryptocurrencies.

NBC News reports on what exactly happened during Elon Musk's appearance on Saturday Night Live — starting with a surprisingly personal monologue: "I don't always have a lot of intonation or variation in how I speak," Musk said, "which I'm told makes for great comedy." He admitted he's socially awkward and said he was the first person with Asperger syndrome to host the show — "or at least the first to admit it."

"I know I sometimes say or post strange things but that's just how my brain works," Musk, 49, said. "I reinvented electric cars and I'm sending people to Mars on a rocket ship. Did you think I was also going to be a chill, normal dude?"
ET Canada notes that Twitter users later pointed out that former SNL castmember (and later episode host) Dan Aykroyd has also said he was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome. But NBC notes that Saturday's show was focused on the interests and eccentricities of Elon Musk. His mother, Maye Musk, appeared as part of the show's pre-celebration of Mother's Day. "I'm excited for my Mother's Day gift," she said, before mentioning a form of cryptocurrency hyped by her son. "I just hope it's not Dogecoin."

"It is," said Musk, a big investor in the cryptocurrency...
And later in a skit with Michael Che, Musk had also played a fictional cryptocurrency expert who's asked repeatedly to explain Dogecoin. "It actually started as a joke based on an internet meme but now it's taken over in a very real way," Musk said. "It's the future of currency." Asked again by Che, he said, "I keep telling you, it's a cryptocurrency you can trade for conventional money."

"Oh," Che said. "So it's a hustle."

"Yeah," Musk said, "it's a hustle...."

Dogecoin tracker Darren Rovell tweeted that the cryptocurrency had, at one point, lost $30 billion in value during the show.
In fact, by early Sunday Dogecoin was down 40%, trading as low as 44 cents, reports CNN: It's unclear what was driving the dogecoin selloff. Perhaps investors wanted Musk to say something more supportive of the cryptocurrency. But more likely, there was some "buy the rumor / sell the news" strategy, trying to capitalize on investors' predictions coming true by selling high. Dogecoin traded so actively that Robinhood announced early Sunday morning it was having issues processing crypto trades and was working to resolve the problem.

This afternoon Elon Musk tweeted a special URL allowing viewers outside the U.S. to simultaenously livestream his 90-minute appearance on Saturday Night Live for the first time in more than 100 countries, starting at 11:30 p.m. EST. The A.V. Club had a sardonic reaction to the livestreaming on YouTube: Good news for anyone looking at tonight's upcoming broadcast of Saturday Night Live — in which labor-busting vaccine skeptic Elon Musk will be given a platform to broadcast his techno-dystopian brain contents to the world — and thought, "Wow, there's not enough Google involved here." Well, not anymore.
Musk has already appeared in a two promos for the show. (Though CNN quips that the tonight's live show means NBC is "relying on Musk to filter his thoughts in real time, despite little evidence, historically, of him holding back on just about anything he wants to say — even when under scrutiny by federal regulators.") And the rest of the world is getting ready too. While Tesla brought the Cybertruck prototype to its New York City store, Lucid Air made plans to broadcast an ad for its coming 500-mile-range electric car that will compete with cars from Musk's Tesla.

Meanwhile, Bleeping Computer reports that Twitter scammers have been hacking into verified Twitter accounts and changing the profiles to impersonate SNL's, then replying to Musk's tweets with URL's lead to cryptocurrency giveaway scams. "We have determined that the scammers have made at least $97,054.62 over the past two days. The Ethereum giveaway scams also earned them $13,758." And the Dogecoin scammers netted at least $42,456.

And this week Slate also noted a spike in the price of Dogecoin. The joke cryptocurrency based on a shiba inu meme is up — uh, let me check — about 20 percent since this time Tuesday, has just about doubled in price since April 27, and as of this moment is up about 26,000 percent for the year (lol). It's trading around 64 cents as I type this... [I]t's probably not worth overthinking this. We're living in the stonks era. Elon is going on a sketch comedy show and is hinting that he might bring up a dumb digital token that everyone finds inherently funny. Now CNBC is hauling on experts to illuminate what the hell is going on, and members of the financial media are having to write earnest explainers about why you should invest in the dog money with caution, as if a single sane person would think otherwise.

What makes the whole rally uniquely amusing, compared with, say, the rise of Bitcoin, is that it's a willfully dumb affront not just to traditional finance, but also to the broader crypto community — which has, shall we say, mixed feelings about Dogecoin, mostly because they think it makes their project, which they tend to treat with self-righteous seriousness, look very silly... Dogecoin is the, well, underdog of the crypto world, the currency that was looked down upon by much of the Bitcoin- and Ethereum-boosting elite. Except now it has an $82 billion market cap. The dogecoiners — basically the sweet, dumb, bong-ripping frat of the crypto world — find all this hilarious.
So what will happen tonight? Ultimately castmember Michael Che, who co-hosts the show's parody newscast segment Weekend Update, joked that while some of the show's performers objected to Musk's appearance, he saw the selection of Musk as both "polarizing" and "exciting."

"You know, what's funny is that I would say I know about 20 to 25% of the white people that get to host the show anyway. So Elon, I was like, 'Oh, I know who he is at least.'"

Share your own reactions in the comments.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: A second cryptocurrency exchange has collapsed in Turkey amid a crackdown on the industry. The platform, Vebitcoin, said in a brief statement on its website that it has ceased all activities after facing financial strain and that it would update clients on the situation as soon as possible. Days earlier, Thodex, went offline with its CEO reportedly leaving the country. Local media reports say Thodex founder Faruk Fatih Ozer flew to Albania, taking $2 billion of investors' funds with him. Turkey has issued an international arrest warrant for Ozer, while 62 people were detained in connection with complaints filed against Thodex.

Turkish authorities have blocked Vebitcoin's domestic bank accounts and detained four people as part of a probe into the exchange, Reuters reported Saturday. According to CoinGecko data, Vebitcoin had almost $60 million in daily trading volumes prior to its collapse. Some Turks have turned to crypto as a way to protect their savings from skyrocketing inflation and the weakening of its currency, the lira. But there have been growing calls for regulation of the market due to concerns around fraudulent activity. Earlier this month, Turkey's central bank banned the use of digital assets for payments. And President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called for swift regulation, warning of pyramid schemes emerging in the crypto markets.

Dogecoin, the virtual currency that originally started as an internet meme more than seven years ago, has surged more than 85% in the last 24 hours and is trading at $0.13. Its market cap is now over $17 billion. CNN reports: The currency has soared more than 2,000% from the start of the year, and has a big fan in Tesla CEO Elon Musk, whose tweets about it have on occasion driven up Dogecoin's value. Dogecoin has also enjoyed something of a cult status on Reddit, where a popular group -- not unlike the WallStreetBets group behind GameStop's rally -- decided earlier this year to propel its value "to the moon." Dogecoin soared over 600% in the wake of that push. The latest surge in crypto prices comes as Coinbase became the first major cryptocurrency company to list its shares on a U.S. stock exchange.