Photographer: Yuriko Nakao / Getty Images
Photographer: Yuriko Nakao / Getty Images
There’s a major suspect in the identity of the owner of the world’s largest Dogecoin cryptocurrency wallet, and it’s a name that should be known: Robinhood Markets.
The timing for the creation of the initial digital wallet used for storage in June 2018 follows with Robinhood’s Dogecoin trading offered to its customers in July of that year. This is according to blockchain data tracker Elliptic and reproduced by online sleuths on Reddit’s Dogecoin forum.
“It almost certainly belongs to Robinhood,” said Tom Robinson, chief scientist and co-founder of Elliptic. “The timing of its creation, and the creation of addresses from which funds were received, are consistent with the timing of Robinhood’s support of Dogecoin.”
Dogecoin has risen more than 950% since the beginning of the year from less than half a cent to more than five cents per coin as Reddit users flocked to the cryptocurrency based on the smile of a smiling Shiba Inu.
The owner of the wallet, which controls almost 29% of the Dogecoin in circulation, then paid attention Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk tweeted that “too much concentration” is the only real problem with the cryptocurrency before saying it would pay the largest holders to “invalidate their accounts”.
Musk tweeted his suspicion Tuesday that Robinhood could be the biggest holder, and then later supported calls for Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev to explain the broker’s previous decisions to trading GameStop Corp shares and Dogecoin during the market mania in January.
While attention rose on Wednesday over who owned the largest Dogecoin wallet, Robinhood tweeted that it would not confirm which addresses belong to them.
A Robinhood spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.