Crypto Espresso: Special Long Black ‘This is a proper moonshot’ Edition

Good morning Coinheads!

We’ve got a bit to cover this morning, so let’s get the number stuff outta the way early.

Overnight, things have been less than excellent. BTC is down about 0.6%, ETH retreated from its recent solid efforts and gave up about 2.5%, XRP is down about 4.0% and Solana is about 5.6% less fun than this time yesterday.

It’s not terrible, though – especially compared to the newly-crowned undisputed Kings of Loss Porn, BlackRock, which has lost an undies-spattering $2.5 TRILLION dollars in just the past six months.

Let’s all pause for a moment and consider that one company that has lost more money than the entire crypto market has in the soc-called “Crypto Winter”. In six months.

Anyhow… we need coffee – and so do you. Let’s ride.

Now this is what a moonshot looks like

There’s a bit to unpack here, so let’s start at the top. It turns out that the whole notion of novelty pop songs is a divisive one. Lots of people love them, but generally they are universally steaming heaps of secondhand sausage on the collective chest of humanity.

Except for Joe Dolce’s classic A Shaddap You Face, which has aged pretty well considering how blisteringly racist it is.

So anyway… Super-late last night, we get an email from a UK guy called Joh Balding, and Johnny is a man with a dream, some extremely patient friends (including one with a guitar) and family. And above all, a deep, abiding passion for Doge.

John loves his Doge so much that he paired up with anoither Johnny, Johnny Stotts to write a song, make a music video and put it on Youtube. Because Johnny B wants Elon Musk to play this song on the moon.

It’s here in Crypto Espresso because The Boss (not that one, the guy in charge here at Stockhead) said “Gregor… give this a run. I reckon it’s pretty good.”

That led to a “free and frank exchange of ideas”, which I lost because I’m still the new guy – so, here’s the favourite son of Leeds, Mr Johnny Stotts, to sing us “Mission to the Moon: Doge-1”.

And actually… Johnny’s song is the musical equivalent of an ominously blob-shaped melanoma. It’s starting to grow on me.

(We should note that Johnny’s not the first to try his hand at churning out a crypto anthem – self-proclaimed crypto-rapper Rito Rhymes has been at it for a while now, and you can read all about him here, as a bemused Badman grapples with whatever’s going on inside Rito’s head.)

Anyway… we here at Stockhead are suckers for an underdog who has dared to dream a dream – and dreams don’t get much bigger than trying to get one of the richest men in the world to fire an iPod at the moon to play a song that no one will hear because the moon, quite famously, lacks the atmosphere necessary for sound to travel.

More importantly, at the end of the day it’s objectively hilarious. So – Elon – if you’re reading this, I’ll do you a deal: You organise for Johnny’s tune to get played on the moon, and I will stop telling every taxi driver I meet that you smell like someone sprayed an entire can of Lynx into a dumpster full of recently-sacked rocket scientists.

Tesla has been shovelling BTC out the back door

Speaking of obscenely rich and powerful people, Coindesk is reporting that Tesla has not-so-quietly been hoisting Bitcoin out the back door almost as fast as it’s been throwing its workforce out into the street.

News that the EV company, famously bullish on crypto because of course it is, has sold off US$936m in Q2 2022 – which was enough to account for a 1.7% dip in BTC when the news broke.

Gamer Square Enix gets its money into Bitcoin start-up

Game publisher Square Enix, the crew behind the oh-so-Japanese fan-favourite thumb-buster Final Fantasy series, has joined a group of investors who’ve sunk US$35 million into Bitcoin gaming start-up Zebedee.

Decrypto says the start-up is close to finalising a near-instant micropayment system that will allow developers to turn almost any in-game event into a real-time financial transaction – so we can expect stuff like real-money bounty matches in FPS shooters to become the new normal.

Crypto getting greener, says BTC Mining Council

And in good news for anyone who lives within a metre of the high-tide mark – Micronesia, we’re lookin’ at you – the Bitcoin Mining Council is reporting that 59.5% of the energy consumed by miners in Q2 2022 came from a sustainable energy mix.

Cryptonews.com reports that’s a 6% increase in greener energy use over the previous quarter, which is a decent step forward for an industry that has an enormous image problem in that regard.