As the price of Bitcoin rises, so will FOMO froth from the “retail crowd” and random celebrities – such as Mariah Carey. As Leonard Cohen once said: “That’s how it goes, everybody knows.”

Until it all has its “blow-off top”, that is, and everything dumps once again. What goes up, must come down (and then hopefully go right back up again…)

But the pop icon (Carey, not Cohen) is the latest to give a celebrity seal of approval to Bitcoin (BTC). And she’s doing it through a partnership with the crypto exchange and custody service Gemini – led by the famous Winklevoss twins Cameron and Tyler.

In a video message to her 10.2 million Instagram followers, Carey revealed today that she’s teamed with Gemini to help promote Bitcoin and support girls of colour pursue higher eduction goals, specifically  STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) degrees.

According to the video, the All I Want for Christmas singer invests in Bitcoin through Gemini.

“Did you know you don’t need to buy a whole Bitcoin to invest?” Carey told her fans. “In fact, you can buy as little as $5” she continued, before providing a referral code to redeem US$20 in free BTC.

Carey also gave Gemini’s free education platform Cryptopedia a nod, for teaching her about cryptocurrency investing.

Other celebrities to have recently come out of the woodwork as crypto investors, promoters and/or non-fungible token-buying “degenerates” include NFL legend Tom Brady, NBA star Steph Curry, former boxer Mike Tyson, rapper Snoop Dog (aka @CozomoMedici on Twitter), KISS bassist Gene Simmons, actress Reese Witherspoon, several European football stars and droves more. The list is practically endless at this stage.

Closer to home, Stockhead has been noticing former Test and ODI batsman Damien Martyn tweeting out quite a bit more crypto content than cricket-related stuff just lately…

In fact, looking further through the Australian cricket legend’s feed, it appears he’s been a fan of crypto for quite some time.

 

In other news: Vitalik dumps more dog-meme coins

Meanwhile, in canine-coin-related news, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has reportedly sold off another US$4.3 million dollars worth of dog-meme crypto tokens, which he involuntarily received in recent months.

The unsolicited tokens were sent to Buterin’s ETH wallet, presumably from the founders of Dogecoin copycat crypto projects looking to legitimise their offerings. Buterin is regarded as a legendary, pioneering figure within the cryptocurrency space.

According to Crypto Briefing, Buterin sold a pack of six different dog coins through the decentralised exchange Uniswap today. The tokens include Aidi Inu, Small Doge, Jejudoge, Baby Shiba, Kishu Inu and HuskyToken.

Due to a lack of liquidity for these tokens, which have all been rapidly falling in value, the amount the Ethereum figurehead actually received from the sales, however, was something closer to US$1.8 million.

In May, Buterin dumped a huge amount of Shiba Inu, Akita Inu and Dogelon Mars, worth about US$63 million, onto an unsuspecting market, sending the meme coins plunging at the time.

Those coins all since significantly recovered from that event, however, so it’ll be interesting to see what happens to the particularly volatile, canine-themed sub-sector after Buterin’s latest “dog dumps”.

An important part of this story, of course, is – what exactly has Vitalik been doing with the “sick gainz” he’s made from these freebie tokens?

In May, he sent a total of 16,000 ETH (about US$63 million at the time) to various charities, as well as donating a further US$1 billion worth of Shiba Inu to the India Covid-Relief Fund.

And this time around, it looks like he’s doing something similar, reportedly so far buying and burning eight per cent of Proof of Humanity’s UBI token supply.

Proof of Humanity is a somewhat inscrutable crypto project that “aims to verify human identities in a decentralised manner”. It’s partnered with non-profit organisation Democracy Earth and its UBI (Universal Basic Income) Token. “Our verified humans will be the first fully decentralised UBI recipients”, reads a statement on the Proof of Humanity website.

 

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