Reddit may have unmasked the best doge.
Cryptocurrency enthusiasts on the site think Robinhood – the investment app that is at the heart of GameStop’s stock frenzy last month – owns a digital wallet stuffed with nearly $ 2 billion in dogecoin.
The account – which controls about 29 percent of all dogecoins currently in circulation – rose to prominence this week after Tesla boss Elon Musk raised concerns about “concentration” on the ownership of the meme-inspired cryptocurrency.
A user named “AndreiFromAlberta” claimed to have solved the mystery in a long post on Reddit’s dogecoin-focused message board.
The portfolio in question was created in February 2019 – about seven months after Robinhood started offering dogecoin exchanges – and received large amounts of dogecoin from other accounts that appear to be linked to Robinhood, according to the post.
“It almost certainly belongs to Robinhood,” Tom Robinson, co-founder and chief scientist at blockchain data company Elliptic, told Bloomberg News, which reported the speculation on Wednesday. “The times of his creation and the creation of the addresses from which he received funds correspond to the times of Robinhood’s support for Dogecoin.”
Musk himself seems to support the theory. In response to a tweet from Tuesday postulating that Robinhood may own the wallet, he said, “It seems so.”
The account’s assets exploded in value, as the price of dogecoin rose from less than a cent at the beginning of the year to about 5 cents on Thursday, although the digital currency started out as a joke.
If the wallet is from Robinhood, it is probably being used for storage purposes only. The California-based startup says it uses its own wallets to hold the cryptocurrencies that users buy and own through its platform.
But Robinhood declined to say whether it is the dogecoin whale.
“Like other cryptographic platforms, for reasons of operational security and to protect customer privacy, we will not confirm which addresses belong to us or not,” says the company said in a statement was posted on Twitter on Wednesday.
Robinhood also said that he does not currently invest in cryptocurrency or use any of his clients’ cryptocurrencies for his own benefit.
A Robinhood spokesman declined to comment further.