Crypto Markets & The Elon Musk Effect

Happy Bitcoin Pizza Day!

Hello again and happy belated Mother’s Day (and Bitcoin Pizza Day) from the Association of Cryptocurrency Journalists and Researchers! 👋🍕

Per usual, we’ll be starting off this newsletter with a little plug for membership. If you’re reading this, then you’re already the people that we want to see with us as members — so feel free to apply right here. Expect to hear back about your ACJR application as soon as the bear market lets us, if Elon Musk would just stop tweeting. 

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ACJR members get tons of exclusive benefits, including a free subscription to The Street’s Crypto Investornewsletter and discounts on Consensus tickets (which is next week online!), so check out all the perks and reasons that you should become a member. For example, 

ACJR members get to cast votes for our upcoming ACJR awards — the categories are Reporter of the Year, Researcher of the Year, and Story of the Year. If you’re already a member, you can vote right here.

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In the meantime, the crypto media industry is still booming, right along with the broader bull (but sometimes bear) market. In May, Axios compared eight different types of content and how they have performed from April 2020-April 2021 and found crypto content had the most dramatic increase in demand. First place, up 475%! (Lifestyle takes a far second at 42%.)

Before we dive into the top stories of the month, we have some fantastic research that we want to highlight. First up is EXIT SCAM, an upcoming podcast series about Quadriga, the Canadian crypto exchange that went bottom-up after its founder passed away during his honeymoon in India. Next is Zack Voell’s post for Compass Mining about how hard it is to mine “clean” blocks, including all the nuanced contradictions in that phrase.

As for journalistic writing, here’s what we’ve been reading: 

“How Much Energy Does Bitcoin Actually Consume?” by Nic Carter, Harvard Business Review

• With Tesla recently backing out of accepting Bitcoin as a form of payment due to concerns over the crypto’s ecological footprint, Carter’s piece on the difference between energy consumption and carbon emissions is perfectly timely. 

“Bitcoin Gets Wall Street's Attention. But Its Power Lies in Aiding Oppressed Peoples” by Aubrey Strobel, NBC News

• Strobel’s piece reminds us of why Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin in the first place — to make accessible tools that increase financial independence for those that can’t easily access traditional finance.

“So Can We Make NFTs Work for Black Creators or What” by Delia Cai, Deez Links

• Delia Cai relates what she sees as a frustratingly common problem in the online content creation space — Black creators make a meme, a dance, a song, and white creators use their work without crediting them. With these issues as the backdrop, Delia wonders aloud in this succinct piece: can NFTs bring online ownership back to Black content creators?

“Digital Horses Are the Talk of the Crypto World” by Taylor Lorenz, The New York Times

• Lorenz piece details how some Ethereum fans are using “breathing NFTs,” aka playable digital assets with their own “unique DNA.” You can literally race them. But this isn’t your grandparents’ Kentucky Derby. 

“Dogecoin Is Up Because It’s Funny” by Matt Levine, Bloomberg Opinion

• Levine takes a stab at explaining why Dogecoin has seen such a price boost. His conclusions regarding the “Elon markets hypothesis”? — “Dogecoin’s status as a joke is what makes it valuable.” Much wow.

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Don’t overlook all of the other amazing things that the ACJR is doing (besides this newsletter, of course). Join our Telegram group, suggest ideas for future online meet-ups and follow us on Twitter!

If you’d like to get more involved in the ACJR, please message us on Twitter or through our website. Annnnd that’s a wrap on May. Let’s stay in touch as summer begins and enjoy the sunshine!

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