Could the cryptocurrency craze cool off come summer?
Closely watched digital assets including bitcoin, ether, litecoin, dogecoin and ripple rallied Wednesday, fueled by a speculative frenzy around the space that has continued to drive demand in 2021.
Dogecoin in particular has been surging ahead of Elon Musk’s upcoming “Saturday Night Live” appearance on May 8, with some traders expecting the Tesla CEO to create buzz for his favorite crypto.
Musk is far from the only celebrity to throw their support behind the market. On Tuesday, “Tiger King” personality Carole Baskin announced a new digital coin, $CAT, for fans to buy items and experiences through her organization.
Even if dogecoin reaches many traders’ $1 target by Musk’s SNL appearance, investing in a space with limited fundamental catalysts carries significant risk, BK Asset Management’s Boris Schlossberg told CNBC’s “Trading Nation” on Wednesday.
“The party … is going to come to an end one way or the other,” said Schlossberg, his firm’s managing director of FX strategy.
“If crypto begins to crack as the summer proceeds, just basically on a corrective basis, Coinbase is going to be, from a stock point of view, one of the easiest shorts there is,” he said of the newly public crypto exchange.
Coinbase fell nearly 3% on Wednesday. Dogecoin climbed nearly 7% to around 60 cents.
“To me, the weakness in Coinbase is suggestive that there’ll be further weakness if any of the cryptos begin to crumble as the summer goes by,” Schlossberg said.
Longer term, however, “bitcoin does have some value” as an alternative to gold even though it “will never be a currency,” he said.
“In that sense, it’s far superior to gold because of its affordability,” Schlossberg said, calling it “the single preeminent crypto asset on a store of value basis.”
One dissenting opinion came from Gina Sanchez, founder and CEO of Chantico Global.
“None of these things really pass muster in terms of stores of value. They’re very volatile, and so, it’s hard to sort of see them as a true form of money,” she said in the same “Trading Nation” interview.
“This broad space, crypto, has been the marginal benefactor of excess stimulus and a closed-down economy,” said Sanchez, also chief market strategist at Lido Advisors.
“People had money, they couldn’t really spend it very easily in the economy, and so, they basically put it to work in a form of gambling. And that gambling has taken on a mania.”
As some countries crack down on electricity-guzzling crypto mining to save resources, there may be storm clouds on the horizon for crypto, Sanchez said.
“I don’t know that this play necessarily has long legs in front of it, but I think that the mania and the ability to go viral and become a meme has been what drives this right now,” she said. “That’s not value and we have to keep reminding ourselves that.”
Disclosure: “Saturday Night Live” is a TV show of NBCUniversal, the parent company of CNBC.
