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STOPELON, an altcoin created yesterday, has broken records in the past few hours as the crypto world seems to have turned en masse against Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) and a novice influence in the crypto sphere.
As is evident from the coin’s name, STOPELON is designed to thwart Elon Musk’s supposedly nefarious designs against Bitcoin and the wider crypto sphere. There is a buy/sell cap of 1 billion coins, and the liquidity pool is locked for 48 days. As far as the specifics are concerned, 1000 billion STOPELON coins have been minted with a burn rate of 40 percent to act as a sizable deflationary influence. Additionally, 6 percent of the transaction fee is reverted back to the holders of the coin.
The STOPELON coin is a part of a concerted effort – detailed here – to wrest control of Tesla away from Elon Musk. The plan involves five distinct steps and eventually aims to utilize the growing market cap of the STOPELON coin to purchase Tesla shares. The thinking goes that, with enough Tesla shares, holders of STOPELON coin will be able to take control of Tesla.
Now, on the surface, this plan seems viable. After all, Elon Musk only owns about 22 percent of equity in Tesla as of the 31st of December. However, the real obstacle lies with supermajority voting provisions in Tesla’s charter. These provisions basically require a vote by at least a two-thirds majority of shareholders to implement major changes, such as mergers, acquisitions, or changes to the board's compensation. This means that the STOPELON project will have to garner the support of around 80 percent of Tesla shareholders to implement their coup, which remains within the realm of the impossible. Moreover, Mr. Musk is also set to receive millions of additional stock options as a part of his 2018 compensation package. This stacks the probability further against STOPELON holders.
Regardless of the viability of the STOPELON coin, the project does indicate a swell of resentment against the CEO of Tesla. In recent days, a number of other altcoins have popped up against Mr. Musk, including the aptly named Fuckelon coin, which has exploded in popularity so much so that its market cap has increased by millions of dollars in just the past few hours.
At the heart of STOPELON and other similar coins is a desire to ridicule Mr. Musk’s antics. As we detailed yesterday, this bad blood started last week when Mr. Musk announced that Tesla would stop accepting Bitcoin (BTC) as a payment medium for the company’s electric vehicles. While explaining the rationale for this move, Tesla’s CEO pointed out Bitcoin’s soaring energy consumption and the attendant negative impact on the environment as the deciding factor. However, the wider crypto world rejected these assertions given that a large proportion of Bitcoin mining utilizes renewable energy and that the global banking and finance industry uses energy that is orders of magnitude higher. Some even pointed to the fact that Tesla’s EVs are themselves charged using electricity generated by fossil fuels. Nonetheless, the real showdown occurred yesterday when, in the face of relentless criticism, Mr. Musk seemed to indicated that Tesla would get rid of its entire Bitcoin stake, worth around $1.5 billion just a few weeks back.
Indeed 😉 pic.twitter.com/67Ox8V6h2X
— Mr. Whale (@CryptoWhale) May 16, 2021
While Musk later clarified that Tesla has not yet materially sold its Bitcoin stake, the possibility remains alive. Moreover, the STOPELON coin seems to be a reaction against what many people believe is a blatant attempt by Mr. Musk to manipulate the prices of cryptocurrencies in order to generate outsized gains. After all, The CEO of Tesla did something similar with Dogecoin (DOGE) recently. Regardless of the outcome of this fight, things are certainly reaching a boiling point. Stay tuned for further updates.
