ACCT 520: CASE 2: Impact of BITCOIN on the Management Options:Bitcoin bubble bursts overnight, dragging down stocks
ISSUE I: After stunning run-up over the past year, cryptocurrencies are tanking.
Recently, a broad selloff of prominent cryptocurrencies has vaporized billions of dollars in value. Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency affected, is off more than 18 percent in the last 24 hours. Currently, it’s worth just over half what it was in mid-April. Over the past week, more than $600 billion has been wiped out of a wide range of more than 7,000 cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin, ether, and meme coins like dogecoin, according to CoinGecko.
The causes for the selloff are myriad. The first shot across the bow came last week when Tesla CEO Elon Musk declared that his company would no longer be accepting bitcoin for car purchases. The change happened less than two months after he said that Tesla would accept bitcoin, and the about-face came as Musk said he is concerned about the environmental damages being wrought by the energy-intensive cryptocurrency.
The next jolt to crypto markets came this past Sunday when Musk suggested that Tesla either had sold or would be selling its bitcoin holdings, which amounted to $1.5 billion when they were disclosed back in early February. Musk’s market-moving tweetLinks to an external site. was a cryptic “Indeed” posted in reply to @CryptoWhale, who had said, “Bitcoiners are going to slap themselves next quarter when they find out Tesla dumped the rest of their