Tech
Crypto investors hate Elon Musk so much they minted a coin to stop him
The currency, which is aptly named STOPELON, hopes to eventually take over all of Tesla's stock.
Tesla’s resident Technoking Elon Musk has angered the cryptocurrency community to no end this week, in large part due to his sudden U-turn decision to not accept bitcoin in exchange for electric vehicles. Now the community is ready to avenge this week’s 20 percent price drop by — how else? — creating a new cryptocurrency.
STOPELON was created with the sole intention of (as maybe you’ve guessed by now) stopping Musk’s market influence.
“Elon Musk is infamous for irresponsibly manipulating the cryptocurrency market with his Twitter account,” the Stop Elon team writes. “It’s ridiculous! He’s toying with people’s portfolios like candy, like the narcissistic billionaire he is and always will be. We say ENOUGH.”
Musk’s uncanny influence over the entirety of the cryptocurrency market has been greeted by overwhelming disdain from crypto fans and general economists alike. And though Musk swears he hasn’t sold any more bitcoin to take advantage of that influence, there’s nothing to stop him from further exerting that influence in the future.
One tweet is enough to send the market crashing, and the SEC isn’t about to get involved with matters of cryptocurrency. The community’s decided to take matters into its own hands.
It’s a real coin — STOPELON isn’t just a movement — it’s also an actual cryptocurrency. It can be bought and traded just like bitcoin or Musk favorite Dogecoin.
There’s a caveat, though. Since it’s new and holds almost no fiat value (it’s trading at about $0.0000266708 per STOPELON coin, right now), the process for acquiring STOPELON is a little complicated. Potential buyers can’t just open Cash App and buy on a whim; there’s a complex system of apps and transaction addresses to navigate. Still, it’s real. You can buy it if you have the energy to deal with all that.
Will this actually stop the Technoking? — The short answer is no, it won’t. It will, if anything, concentrate the hate against Musk into more of a full-fledged movement. The relative success of STOPELON will depend entirely upon how much of it investors buy. If by some chance it gets big enough, it could eventually go the way of Dogecoin and receive a listing on large trading bases like Kraken or Coinbase.
Eventually, STOPELON wants to end up with complete control of Tesla stock and “fly to fucking Pluto.” We’re a little skeptical as to the viability of either part of that mission. But hey, maybe it’ll make Elon angry. That’s a reward in itself.
