Mooners and Shakers: Bitcoin ransom conspiracy theory over US flights chaos emerges; BTC travelling okay
A bit like waiting around for your crypto portfolio to moon, flight delays are a pain. So are Bitcoin ransom theories for the US government.
People in the US and Canada certainly know all about the flight delays and cancellations. As you probably know, flights across North America were grounded a week ago due to the countries’ air-alert systems both, independently, experiencing what has widely been assumed to be computer glitches.
You know, the sort caused by a schlubby Jurassic Park technician spilling Pepsi all over his keyboard.
What does this have to do with Bitcoin? We’re almost at the top of the queue for the point here…
While Biden and co have dismissed such rumours, conspiracy theorists and the odd prominent US media identity – conservative political commentator Tucker Carlson, for instance – have flagged the idea that the FAA and Canadian outages were caused by cyber attacks, and that Bitcoin may have been used as a ransom currency.
Both countries’ air-alert systems are not linked, so it was indeed quite a coincidence that both experienced a similar technical glitch within 24 hours of each other.
Why were flights across the USA grounded last week?
Tucker Carlson has a theory, and it may explain the recent bitcoin price pump. pic.twitter.com/on67s8A1Ra
— GANDALF (@BTCGandalf) January 17, 2023
If the conspiracy theories do hold up then, according to Carlson and others, it would be ONE reason to explain why Bitcoin has spiked so hard, so suddenly.
“Almost all ransoms like this are paid in Bitcoin,” noted Carlson. “So if the US government was buying huge amounts of Bitcoin in order to pay a ransom, Bitcoin prices would surge, of course.”
Tinfoil hats a-go-go? Quite possibly, yeah. Then again, it’s not like a major US oil pipeline service was hacked by a group of Russians and held to ransom for Bitcoin last year or anything, was it.
Annnyyway, on to some daily price action.
Top 10 overview
With the overall crypto market cap at US$1.03 trillion, pretty flat since this time yesterday, here’s the current state of play among top 10 tokens – according to CoinGecko.
Bitcoin and much of the crypto market has been soaring this past week or so, as you might be aware. Is it grounded? Has it reached its temporary destination for now? It would appear so, judging how the crypto market cap at large is plateauing out somewhat.
Beyond BTC ransom-spiking theories, there have been concerns floating about that this latest rally may not be exactly organic for other reasons – namely manipulation by whales (large asset holders).
Crypto market data gurus Material Indicators, for instance, have expressed their suspicion that the rally is “choreographed”.
Been expecting the block of bids placed Fri the 13th to rug, but it’s attracted over 2x the amount of bid liquidity into the range, which is short term bullish. IMO, this move seems choreographed. Not fighting it, but limiting exposure to manage risk. #FireCharts #RiskManagement pic.twitter.com/epjW0wBT24
— Material Indicators (@MI_Algos) January 17, 2023
We’ve been seeing a lot of other disbelief and mistrust on Twitter regarding the past fortnight’s Bitcoin/crypto price action.
Still, the popular and well-respected markets analyst Eric Crown is throwing this one out there today…
Liquidate them all. pic.twitter.com/M317bXywvx
— meatport (@meatportmusic) January 17, 2023
… and Bitcoin has been doing a decent impression of an asset that’s lingering above or around some support for the past day or so.
Uppers and downers: 11–100
Sweeping a market-cap range of about US$8.6 billion to about US$384 million in the rest of the top 100, let’s find some of the biggest 24-hour gainers and losers at press time. (Stats accurate at time of publishing, based on CoinGecko.com data.)
DAILY PUMPERS
• Casper Network (CSPR), (market cap: US$411 million) +13%
• GALA (GALA), (mc: US$385 million) +9%
• EthereumPoW (ETHW), (mc: US$455 million) +7%
• Helium (HNT), (mc: US$446 million) +7%
• Aave (AAVE), (mc: US$1.2 billion) +6%
DAILY SLUMPERS
• Aptos (APT), (market cap: US$1.23 billion) -5%
• Lido DAO (LDO), (market cap: US$1.69 billion) -4%
• Huobi (HT), (mc: US$805 million) -3%
• Uniswap (UNI), (mc: US$4.83 billion) -3%
• Flare (FLR), (mc: US$481 million) -2%
Around the blocks
Some pertinence and randomness that stuck with us on our morning moves through the Crypto Twitterverse…
I wish we could get @elonmusk fully orange pilled. I think he’s incredibly close.
— Joe Burnett (🔑)³ (@IIICapital) January 17, 2023
Polygon $MATIC completes successful hardfork! 🥳
— Altcoin Daily (@AltcoinDailyio) January 17, 2023
Will the S&P 500 get rejected retesting its weekly trend for the 5th time? Big week. pic.twitter.com/mLebe9ZaGF
— Will Clemente (@WClementeIII) January 17, 2023
