Bitcoin wasn’t the only cryptocurrency to feel the effects of Tesla’s decision. (Pic: Shutterstock)
In the case of cryptocurrencies, academia has barely scratched the surface with respect to identifying the determinants of their prices. For example, studies by Cheah and Fry (2015) and Corbet et al. (2018) claim that Bitcoin has no intrinsic value and that its price has persistently exhibited ‘bubble-like’ behaviour. Makarov and Schoar (2018) find that the prices of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Ripple differ across exchanges for weeks. Outside of academia, the President of the United States recently tweeted that cryptocurrencies are based on “thin air”.1

Yet some crypto watchers have raised red flags over SafeMoon’s unusual structure. It charges a 10 per cent fee to buy tokens and another 10 per cent to sell — almost unheard of in the digital currency world. Half of these fees are paid to owners as an incentive to keep holding and the other half goes into a liquidity pool controlled by the developers. SafeMoon calls itself a DeFi token, or one that uses decentralized finance to govern functions through software, but it has a chief executive officer and chief operating officer. Critics also worry about the discretionary nature of the “manual” coin burns used to adjust its circulation. After 19,000% early gain, crypto SafeMoon’s rules to tamp down selling raise red flags Back to video
Yet tales of meme-coin holders becoming millionaires have attracted new waves of retail investors to crypto — along with a growing number of nefarious players. In May, the Federal Trade Commission tallied a record number of crypto investment scams, with Americans’ losses totalling around US$80 million since October.