New York (CNN Business)The prices of bitcoin, dogecoin and other digital currencies have plunged more than 40% in recent weeks. While Elon Musk isn’t the only reason for the crypto carnage, he certainly isn’t helping.
Whether it’s going on “Saturday Night Live” and joking that dogecoin is a “hustle” or having his epiphany that bitcoin mining may not be great for the environment, Musk’s behavior has cryptocurrency bulls wishing he would stop tweeting and focus more on building cars instead.
Bitcoin (XBT) fans are tired of Musk exerting so much influence over the near-term price movements of seemingly all cryptocurrencies.
“People who followed Musk blindly have lost a lot of money. They may have gotten burned and never come back,” said Alex Mashinsky, CEO and founder of Celsius, a crypto lending platform that offers digital tokens as rewards to customers — similar to a publicly traded company paying a dividend.
“The crypto community needs to be more responsible in how it explains these assets and the risk,” Mashinsky added. “Pundits kept saying we’d never see a down market for bitcoin again because of institutional interest, Square and PayPal, etc. When you hear that, you have to worry.”
