Bitcoin’s valuation soared to impressive heights this week and one of the people considering taking advantage of it was Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams.
The price of bitcoin has skyrocketed this week, reaching the price of $18,274 per bitcoin on Thursday. That’s just roughly $1,000 shy of the record $19,783 price reached in 2017. It is also up from earlier this year when bitcoin was trading below $5,000.
This piqued the interest of several aspiring cryptocurrency investors, among them actress Maisie Williams who’s breakout role as Arya Stark in the HBO series Game of Thrones saw her rise to fame.
On Wednesday Williams asked her Twitter followers for their advice on whether or not she should invest in bitcoin.
“Should I go long on bitcoin?” Williams tweeted and attached a poll.
However, while 53.4% of the 902,304 people who voted advised her against it, the New Mutants star apparently ignored their input.
“Thank you for the advice. I bought some anyway,” she later tweeted.
One of the people who pitched in to Williams’s request for advice was Tesla-founder Elon Musk, who was recently named the third richest man in the world.
Although, his response may be a bit cryptic as he replied to her initial tweet by referencing a song from the Netflix series The Witcher, tweeting, “Toss a bitcoin to [your] Witcher.”
He then followed up with a link to a story from American satirical site The Onion, published after bitcoin took a tumble after its 2017 peak and titled “Bitcoin Plunge Reveals Possible Vulnerabilities In Crazy Imaginary Internet Money”.
Musk tweeting about bitcoin attracted scammers attempting to extort his followers of digital money by mimicking his profile and calling for them to send money to an anonymous address, The Independent reported.
This is not the first time that has happened. Earlier in 2020, he publicly urged Twitter and Square co-founder Jack Dorsey to fix the issue with bots and scammers.
Musk was also one of the celebrities who had their Twitter accounts hacked in a huge cryptocurrency scam in July this year. The hackers compromised the accounts of famous people like Kim Kardashian, Barack Obama and Jeff Bezos, posting tweets encouraging followers to send them money.
So why is bitcoin rallying right now? According to an analysis in the Financial Times, it could be due to the cryptocurrency being seen as a safe, valuable and rare investment, kinda like gold.
And in times like these, with a raging pandemic and political turmoil in the US, people tend to rush to invest in seemingly safe resources.
However, the editorial warned that bitcoin’s reputation as a safe haven might be more illusion than fact, citing how the value of the digital currency has been on a roller-coaster for years.
Investors could have also been encouraged by respected payment giant PayPal announcing in October that its American customers can now trade cryptocurrencies like bitcoin directly on the app. Several other FinTech companies like challenger bank Revolut offer similar services.
Others, like Marcus Swanepoel, CEO and co-founder of cryptocurrency company Luno, has argued that the turmoil will be the key circumstances needed to make 2021 the year of bitcoin.
“Unlike traditional currencies, bitcoin has a predictable and unchangeable inflation rate,” he argued. “Every ten minutes, new bitcoins are created. Because the value appeal of bitcoin is that the supply is known and certain, it remains attractive as a store of value going forward.
“It is my genuine belief that in the future, cryptocurrency could be the preferred saving method for many and 2021will be the year of its true inception in our day-to-day lives.”
When looking at investment into cryptocurrency and blockchain companies more generally, FinTech Global’s research reveals that the industry is still far away from the heights seen in 2018.
That year $7.62bn were invested into the sector. Investment into the sector has dropped considerably since. In 2019, only $3.11bn were invested. In the first half of 2020, $578.2m were injected into the industry.
Williams is not the only celebrity to have voiced an interest in cryptocurrency ventures. For instance, in September last year we reported that boxer-turned-senator-turned-FinTech entrepreneur Manny Pacquiao would launch his own cryptocurrency, the PAC Coin.
Similarly, American-Senegalese singer Akon is building a city in Senegal named Akon City, powered by his own digital cash: Akoin.
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