Tag:

Billionaire

Bitcoin Billionaire Arthur Hayes Predicts Europe Central Bank Turmoil Will Boost BTC

by admin October 3, 2025

In brief

Arthur Hayes has previously attacked the U.S. Federal Reserve in his blog posts.
This time he’s focusing on the European Central Bank—and honing in on France’s debt.
The crypto entrepreneur argues that France’s debt and money printing will cause Bitcoin’s price to surge.

Crypto mogul Arthur Hayes has previously attacked the U.S. central bank when making lofty Bitcoin price predictions. But this time the billionaire is aiming his criticism at the Eurozone.

In a lengthy Wednesday blog post titled “Bastille Day,” the co-founder and former chief of crypto exchange BitMEX said that French citizens moving their money could lead to excessive money printing on behalf of the European Central Bank, in turn benefiting Bitcoin.

Hayes argues that France, the second-largest economy in the Eurozone, has the highest debt, which the central bank will have to tackle by printing to avoid a collapse of the euro.

“The ECB will valiantly print money to forestall the loss of its raison d’être,” Hayes wrote, adding that “France is fucked.”

He continued: “It shall be a glorious day for the faithful as printed euros will combine with printed dollars, yuan, yen, etc to bid up the price of Bitcoin.”

“Either the ECB presses the Brrr button now and implicitly finances the French welfare state, or it does it later when French capital controls threaten to destroy the euro. Either way, money gets printed in the trillions of euros. Bitcoin doesn’t care and will continue its inexorable rise versus the piece of trash that is the euro.”

Hayes has previously said that Bitcoin would end up doing well due to American monetary policy of printing money. The crypto entrepreneur argued earlier this year that Bitcoin’s price could hit $1 million by 2028 due to Federal Reserve monetary policy.

Bitcoin was recently trading for $120,515 per coin, up 7% over the past seven days, with most of the gains occurring this week, according to CoinGecko, following a government shutdown as many investors looked to BTC as a safe-haven asset. The largest crypto by market cap has helped ignite a wider surge in digital assets.

Hayes also forecasted that Ethereum, the second biggest digital coin, will hit $10,000 by the end of 2025. Ethereum stood at $4,492, a nearly 10% gain from a week ago.

Digital asset observers say that investors are interested in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin during periods of unrest and currency debasement.

Daily Debrief Newsletter

Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.

Source link

October 3, 2025 0 comments

NFT Gaming

Senator Accuses Crypto Billionaire of Dodging Puerto Rico Tax Evasion Investigation

by admin October 2, 2025

In brief

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) alleged Wednesday that Pantera Capital founder Dan Morehead may have used Puerto Rican residency to improperly dodge U.S. taxes, and has avoided cooperating with an investigation into the matter for months.
In a letter sent this week, Wyden said Morehead’s attorneys “have all but disappeared” since pledging to cooperate with the inquiry in January.
Meanwhile, Pantera has greatly expanded its crypto footprint, including by launching a $1.25 billion Solana treasury company on Wall Street.

The top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee has accused a prominent crypto investor of refusing to cooperate with an investigation into an alleged billion-dollar tax evasion scheme running through one of the digital asset community’s most popular enclaves: Puerto Rico.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) first opened an investigation into the finances of Pantera Capital founder Dan Morehead in January, as part of a broader inquiry into how “ultra-high net worth” Americans have used Puerto Rican residency as a means to obtain lucrative tax exemptions.

Wyden had not previously publicly announced that investigation until now, however. This week, the senator blasted Morehead in a published letter accusing the hedge fund manager and crypto investor of refusing to cooperate with the Senate’s investigation into his finances.

“While your attorneys initially suggested to my staff you were willing to cooperate with this inquiry, they have all but disappeared,” Wyden wrote, “heightening my concerns that you may have improperly avoided over $100 million dollars in federal taxes on capital gains that accrued while you still lived in San Francisco.”

The letter, sent to Morehead on Tuesday, said the crypto-focused venture capitalist may have received improper tax counsel which led him to obtain Puerto Rican residency shortly before earning hundreds of millions of dollars on the sale of a large Pantera position, and then declare that income exempt from U.S. taxes.

Wyden argued this was an incorrect interpretation of Puerto Rican tax law, which he said requires new residents of the island territory to pay U.S. taxes on such transactions for 10 years following their move.

“These are serious allegations of potential abuse of Puerto Rico tax incentives to avoid the payment of U.S. taxes that you must immediately address,” Wyden wrote.

Morehead did not respond to Decrypt’s request for comment on this story.

As the Trump administration has moved aggressively to create favorable conditions for crypto companies and investors, Morehead’s Pantera Capital has spun up several new ventures to take advantage of the moment.

The firm has spent hundreds of millions of dollars investing in Wall Street-traded digital asset treasury companies, which have taken off in popularity this year amidst promises of lucrative, risky returns. It recently launched a $1.25 billion effort to convert a publicly traded neurotechnology company into a massive Solana treasury.

Earlier this week, the company, Helius Medical Technologies—which once created medical devices designed to improve the lives of people with neurological diseases—formally changed its name to Solana Company. Tabs on the company’s website titled “Our Technology” and “Our Research” appear to have been deactivated.

Daily Debrief Newsletter

Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.

Source link

October 2, 2025 0 comments

Crypto Trends

Elon Musk and Dogecoin: How the Billionaire Became the ‘Dogefather’

by admin September 28, 2025

With Dogecoin making a comeback late last year and early into 2025, some may be pondering: Where did the asset come from? What’s it for? And what’s Tesla CEO Elon Musk got to do with it?

The original meme coin’s boom largely has the world’s richest man to thank. Musk’s obsession with shitposting helped boost the coin to a top 10 cryptocurrency.

It’s been a wacky ride over the past few years, culminating in Musk’s appointment to lead a government agency called DOGE—yes, really. But we’ll explain it all.

2018: What the DOGE?

Dogecoin is the biggest and oldest meme coin and the second-biggest proof-of-work cryptocurrency. It was created in 2013 as a joke by developers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer.

The idea was to poke fun at the huge number of altcoins and crypto projects entering the market following Bitcoin’s rapid ascent, and the coin enjoyed relative obscurity and a low price during its early years.

But then along came Musk. The eccentric billionaire asked Palmer in a 2018 tweet to help with the Twitter bot problem. Scammers had created a number of fake high-profile accounts, including Musk’s, in order to push crypto cons. The scams typically posted fake Ethereum giveaways.

It was the first real interest Musk had shown in Dogecoin.

2019: The pump begins

Musk started to pump Dogecoin the next year. “Dogecoin might be my fav cryptocurrency,” he wrote in April 2019, in response to a screenshot of a poll from the official Dogecoin account asking who should be the cryptocurrency’s CEO. “It’s pretty cool.”

The post would be the first of many to cause the asset’s value to rocket upwards. Soon after Musk’s first tweet about Dogecoin, the market cap of the coin hit $400 million and crypto exchange Huobi listed it.

Musk being Musk, however, didn’t stop there: He branded himself Dogecoin’s CEO—briefly—on Twitter before continuing to fire out tweets asking if the coin is “really a valid form of currency” or posting memes associated with the original dog-coin.

2020/2021: Bull run arrives

Musk continued to pump Dogecoin’s price here and there with his tweets, but things really got started during the 2021 bull run. Major exchanges like Coinbase Pro listed Dogecoin and the asset developed a bigger cult following, not to mention growing mainstream awareness.

DOGE gained a market cap bigger than many companies in the S&P 500. And developers exclusively told Decrypt that they had secretly been working with Musk since 2019 to make the coin a valid payment method and a greener, cheaper alternative to Bitcoin.

But things got stranger when Musk called himself the “Dogefather” ahead of a “Saturday Night Live” skit about the cryptocurrency—again sending the asset’s price roaring upwards. DOGE would jump to its all-time high price of about $0.73 at this time.

Musk’s “SNL” appearance ended up being underwhelming for Doge fans, with the SpaceX boss and his mother’s allusions to the coin ultimately pushing its price down. Still, it continued to bring the strange world of meme coins to the mainstream.

Later that year, Musk announced that his rocket company, SpaceX, would launch a satellite to the moon—completely funded by the cryptocurrency.

2022: Tesla/Twitter mania

The Doge mania continued into 2022 when Musk’s car company started accepting Dogecoin for merchandise.

Dogecoin continued to experience price bumps when Musk bought Twitter and rebranded it to X, hinting that it would also become a payments platform that might, eventually, integrate the O.G. meme coin.

Things came back to bite Musk later that year, though, when an American man hit the billionaire and Tesla and SpaceX with a $258 billion lawsuit for allegedly pumping Dogecoin—an asset with “no value at all,” according to the original filing.

But Musk and his lawyers scored a win in 2024 when a judge sided with them and dismissed the lawsuit, calling the tech entrepreneur’s tweets about Dogecoin “aspirational and puffery,” and noting that “no reasonable investor could rely upon them.”

2024-2025: Trump, Musk, and DOGE

Dogecoin had a relatively quiet 2023, but the meme coin has soared over the last year following Musk’s support of Republican Donald Trump’s campaign for the White House.

That’s mostly because Trump said that Musk would lead a government efficiency commission ahead of being voted back into the seat of power; Musk claimed that it would be called the Department of Government Efficiency—an acronym that matches Dogecoin’s ticker.

Whenever Musk mentioned his future political role with the so-called DOGE ahead of the election, the price of Dogecoin jumped.

But before Trump’s election win, Musk revealed what he has probably thought all along: that he isn’t seriously interested or involved in Bitcoin, Dogecoin, or any cryptocurrency. He just likes the meme coin.

“I’m actually not actively involved in crypto,” he said at a rally. “I make Dogecoin jokes and stuff because I just kind of like Dogecoin—because it’s got the best sense of humor and it has dogs and memes, and I love all those things.”

Still, the price of Dogecoin boomed higher, hitting a three-year high price of $0.48—though it’s fallen substantially since, as of this writing. Musk has recently praised Dogecoin’s rate of inflation and tweeted out a familiar meme image of a dust cloud with the Doge face engulfing a city.

And President-elect Trump made it official that Musk would lead the administration’s new department, though planned co-lead Vivek Ramaswamy bailed in January due to other political ambitions.

Trump even sold t-shirts showing himself and Musk alongside Doge-esque artwork. And the official DOGE website briefly featured the familiar DOGE meme imagery, boosting Dogecoin’s price in the process.

With Trump back in office, Musk’s DOGE started aggressively interrogating U.S. government spending, grabbing headlines as it accesses potentially sensitive citizen data while upending professional norms in the process.

But Musk departed the government role in May, and a public rift has formed between the two men. Musk made some shocking claims about Trump, and the president has in return said that DOGE should scrutinize Musk’s companies—and that he’d look into having Musk deported.

The public battle hasn’t done any favors for Dogecoin’s price, though it has briefly boosted meme coins inspired by the conflict.

Now Elon Musk is back to focusing on his companies, with recent moves reigniting speculation over whether X might integrate Dogecoin or other cryptocurrencies for payments.

And Musk has picked up another connection to Dogecoin of late, albeit unofficially.

Musk’s lawyer, Alex Spiro—who helped defend him in the $258 billion class action DOGE suit dismissed last year—is now chairman of CleanCore Solutions, a publicly traded firm billed as an “official” Dogecoin treasury company. That’s due to backing from House of Doge, the commercialization arm of the Dogecoin Foundation, which supports development around the coin.

Editor’s note: This story was originally published on November 13, 2024. It was last updated with new details on September 28, 2025.

Daily Debrief Newsletter

Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.

Source link

September 28, 2025 0 comments

GameFi Guides

Bitcoin bull Michael Saylor makes Bloomberg Billionaire List

by admin September 7, 2025

Michael Saylor, strategy co-founder and executive chairman, has made his first appearance on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Summary

Michael Saylor debuts on Bloomberg Billionaires Index at $7.37B net worth.
His fortune grew by $1b in 2025 as Bitcoin surged near $111K levels.
$6.72b of Saylor’s wealth is tied to MicroStrategy stock, per Bloomberg.

Saylor joins crypto billionaire club

Saylor’s net worth has risen by $1 billion since the start of the year to $7.37 billion, ranking 491st globally.

The wealth surge coincides with Strategy’s continued Bitcoin (BTC) accumulation strategy and the cryptocurrency’s price movements throughout 2025. With 636,505 BTC as of September 2025, the firm has the most extensive corporate crypto treasury on record.

Saylor, who founded Strategy (previously known as MicroStrategy) in 1989, has $650 million in cash and $6.72 billion tied up in company stock, according to Bloomberg’s tracking methodology.

The direct correlation between his wealth and cryptocurrency markets makes him one of the most Bitcoin-exposed billionaires globally. See below.

Bloomberg Billionaires Index data

Saylor’s debut comes as Bitcoin trades around $111,000, down about 4.3% over the last 30 days.

Strategy’s first bitcoin purchase was in 2020. As of August 2025, it has accumulated 628,946 BTC — valued at roughly $76 billion — acquired at an average price of $73,288 per coin for a total investment of about $46.1 billion.

The most recent major purchase occurred on Sept. 2, when Strategy acquired 4,048 Bitcoin at an average cost of $110,981 per coin, spending $449.25 million.

Earlier purchases in August included 3,081 BTC on Aug. 25 at $115,829 per coin for $356.87 million and 430 BTC on Aug. 18 at $119,666 each for $51.46 million.

The company also bought 155 BTC on Aug. 11 at $116,401 per coin for $18.04 million.

Strategy Bitcoin purchse data from Saylortracker

Strategy’s Bitcoin strategy has helped Saylor

Saylor’s inclusion places him among other prominent cryptocurrency billionaires on Bloomberg’s list.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong ranks 234th with a net worth of $12.8 billion, while Binance founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao holds the 40th spot with $44.5 billion.

The crypto billionaire club has seen changes over time. Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was previously on the list before his exchange collapsed in November 2022, wiping out his fortune and leading to criminal charges.

Strategy’s aggressive accumulation strategy has made it a proxy for Bitcoin exposure among traditional investors. Yet, it was also notably left out of the S&P 500 index inclusion in August.

The company is also involved in lawsuit with investors who allege that the company misled shareholders about the risks and financial impact of its strategy.

Source link

September 7, 2025 0 comments

Crypto Trends

Billionaire Ray Dalio Links Bitcoin’s Rise to ‘Debt-Fueled Heart Attack’ in U.S.

by admin September 3, 2025

In brief

Ray Dalio said the U.S. is risking a “debt-fueled heart attack”
The value of money would be negatively affected if the Federal Reserve is eventually forced to intervene in the bond market.
He compared digital assets to hard currencies.

The U.S. economy is staring down a debt-fueled heart attack within the next few years, but that will likely buoy cryptocurrency prices, according to veteran asset manager Ray Dalio.

In an interview with the Financial Times, the Bridgewater Associates founder linked a rise in the price of digital assets and gold to America’s overwhelming debt burden, which isn’t improving, according to a transcript of the conversation that he posted to X on Wednesday.

The U.S. government is spending more money than it’s taking in, while servicing enormous amounts of debt. And as the government borrows more to cover budget shortfalls, while managing its existing burden, creditors could eventually cause trouble, Dalio said.

Creditors will sell U.S. debt as they grow worried about its ability to function as a store of value, he said. That will likely put the Federal Reserve in a tough position, Dalio added, where it has to decide between rising interest rates and a debt default crisis or printing money to buy debt and “try to hold real interest rates down, which will lower the value of money.”

The billionaire, who foresaw the 2008 financial meltdown, described it as the “traumatic last phase” of a “big debt cycle,” where over the course of history, excessive debt has culminated in an economic contraction and systematic crisis.

To that point, Dalio said that deregulation isn’t a threat to governments’ use of fiat currencies in stabilizing economies or facilitating international trade. It is rather unhealthy debt levels, he said, that are eroding the status of currencies like the greenback across several sovereigns.

“I do see the dollar and the other reserve currency governments’ bad debt situations as threatening to their appeals as reserve currencies and storeholds of wealth, which is what has been contributing to the rises in gold and cryptocurrency prices,” he said.

Bitcoin and gold have surged this year. The precious metal’s price has increased 38% year-to-date, hitting an all-time high of $3,530 per ounce Wednesday, according to Trading Economics. Bitcoin’s price has increased 20% to $112,000 over the same period, according to crypto data provider CoinGecko.

Dalio’s latest assessment of the U.S. economy follows the passage of the GENIUS Act, a federal framework for stablecoins. Dalio said that a decline in the purchasing power of U.S. Treasuries “shouldn’t produce any systematic risk” for them, if they are well regulated.

Dalio said cryptocurrencies resemble hard currencies, partly due to their so-called tokenomics. Bitcoin’s total supply, for example, is capped at 21 million, while the government can theoretically print an unlimited amount of money.

“Crypto is now an alternative currency that has its supply limited, so, all things being equal, if the supply of dollar money rises and/or the demand for it falls, that would likely make crypto an attractive alternative currency,” he said.

In late July, Dalio urged investors to allocate 15% of their portfolios to Bitcoin and gold. It’s a macroeconomic hedge amid increasing risks in bond and equity markets, he said.

Dalio expressed a preference for gold, arguing that a central bank is unlikely to adopt the leading cryptocurrency by market capitalization as a reserve currency. Still, the outlook for some fiat currencies is bleak, he said in the interview with the Financial Times.

“I think that most fiat currencies, especially those with large debts, will have problems being effective storeholds of wealth and will go down in value relative to hard currencies,” he said, pointing to parallels between the coming years and two periods in the 20th century.

Daily Debrief Newsletter

Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.

Source link

September 3, 2025 0 comments

NFT Gaming

Billionaire Tim Draper on $250K Bitcoin Prediction: ‘I Haven’t Been Right Yet’

by admin August 25, 2025

Uber-bullish price target
Bitcoin and Microsoft

Prominent Silicon Valley investor Tim Draper has addressed his failed $250,000 Bitcoin price predictions during his Monday interview on CNBC.

“So, I’ve been predicting $250,000 for Bitcoin for a long time. It turns out I haven’t been right yet,” Draper said, bursting out in laughter.

Nevertheless, Draper claims that the fact that Bitcoin is already halfway there is “very exciting.”

He insists that Bitcoin is a “hedge” against bad governance, arguing that now is actually “a really good time” for the bellwether token.

Uber-bullish price target

Draper, who made his massive fortune with early bets on such names as Skype and Hotmail, was also among the first prominent investors to embrace Bitcoin. In 2014, he bought tens of thousands of Bitcoins that were auctioned off by the US Marshals Service after being confiscated from darkweb marketplace Silk Road.

In 2014, Draper predicted that Bitcoin would hit $10,000 within three years with extreme accuracy.

However, his next bullish target was a huge miss. Draper first stated that Bitcoin would be able to reach $250,000 within four years back in April 2018. He would then repeatedly reiterate that prediction throughout the years.

Bitcoin and Microsoft

As reported by U.Today, Bitcoin recently started losing ground to altcoins, including Ethereum (ETH).

Draper claims that competition is good for Bitcoin, adding that its market dominance is actually higher compared to previous cycles.

He has reiterated that Bitcoin is comparable to tech behemoth Microsoft in the sense that various novel applications are being ported to the leading network.

Draper has stated that there is a “gravitational” pull toward the largest cryptocurrency.

Source link

August 25, 2025 0 comments