BitMEX CEO Pumps DeFi Token as Dave Portnoy Fails, Whats’ Next on Their List?

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As the crypto market is at the edge of a euphoric phase, endorsements of blockchain projects seem to be back in trend. 

BitMEX CEO, Arthur Hayes, made the news with a Tweet of joining the DeFi bull run beginning with the yield farming of YFI (yearn.finance) token. This tweet took from him the markets on 12th August by storm,

I’m a fucking farmer now. Long live the #Defi bull market. 加油!

After the $YAM dump, he moved to $YFI. And, Indeed the DeFi token has yielded the pump, the price of YFI jumps to parity with Bitcoin [BTC] with a high at $12015 on FTX.

YFI/USD 4-Hour Chart on FTX (TradingView)

There is no proof to correlate the pump to Hayes and the DeFi markets have been in a euphoric phase by itself. Hence, here as well correlation doesn’t imply causation. But Hayes certainly seems to be choosing better projects than Dave Portnoy.

Portnoy Fails Though

Dave Portnoy, the US internet celebrity and penny stock trader, seeks to benefit from the free market characteristics of crypto by a leading pump and dump schemes. On 15th August he chose LINK.

But after skyrocketing 1000% from lows this year, LINK seems to have now begun a drop. The percentage drop from peak to swing lows in LINK is 26.8%; at press time, LINK is trading at $16.7.

Portnoy is far too explicit about his schemes, he intends to ‘pump and dump’ penny stocks of the crypto markets. However, instead of joining Portnoy in the pump and dump, the market is directly moving to the dump. Portnoy’s fans who are new to the crypto space might be highly disappointed.

His most recent buy was that of Orchid [OXT], the price action of OXT has shown signs of volume increase or a pump. The vertical line marks the timeline of the tweet from Portnoy.

 

OXT/USD 1-Hour Chart (TradingView)

What’s Next?

Moreover, while Portnoy states that unregulated crypto markets with liquidity are safer to pump because it lies outside the purview of the “SEC mice.” However, if any of the low cap stocks are categorized as illegal security, Portnoy might be looking at the possibility of a rap sheet from the US regulatory agency.

Just a while back, Arthur Hayes announces his interest in Polkadot ($DOT). The token has already pumped over 120% since the breakout from consolidation levels since the launch.

DOT/USDT 4-Hour Chart on Huobi (TradingView)

The doubts in the minds of investors will now be around the fact in that $DOT will be the next $LINK which dumped as profit booking and liquidation of longs ensues.

Does Hayes have more influence to shake the market than Portnoy? Please share your views with us. 

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Nivesh Rustgi

Nivesh from Engineering Background is a full-time Crypto Analyst at Coingape. He is an atheist who believes in love and cultural diversity. He believes that Cryptocurrency is a necessity to deter corruption. He holds small amounts of cryptocurrencies. Faith and fear are two sides of the same coin. Follow him on X at @nivishoes or mail him at nivesh(at)coingape.com

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