The cryptocurrency SafeMoon is up today ahead of the release of the token’s SafeMoon wallet beta test.
CoinMarketCap data shows the price of the digital currency is currently up more than 16 percent over the past 24 hours to about $0.0000046, giving it a market cap of $2.68 billion.
SafeMoon has become a popular altcoin—a term used to describe an alternate cryptocurrency to bitcoin—since its release in March this year. It works by charging a fee on transactions and redistributing part of that to the rest of the token holders.
On Monday, a member of SafeMoon’s core team made a Reddit post announcing a sign-up form would go live on Tuesday for people who want to help beta test the token’s upcoming SafeMoon wallet—which the team says will be “a secure place to store and trade your SafeMoon.”
It’s unclear if that was the cause of the token’s 24-hour price rise. Cryptocurrencies are notorious for their price volatility, and experts have previously warned Newsweek about the risks associated with trading them.
Chester Spatt, a professor of finance at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business, has told Newsweek that people should “be very cautious about new tokens” and added: “People should not be investing funds in these that they cannot afford to lose completely.”
Finance news site Benzinga reported on Monday that SafeMoon rose following a tweet by CEO John Karony in which he claimed SafeMoon’s chief blockchain officer was “involved with the Dogecoin x SpaceX partnership” and said that users will be able to hold Dogecoin in the SafeMoon wallet.
We have no issues with Doge Coin. Fun fact, the SafeMoon Chief Blockchain Officer was involved with the Doge Coin x SpaceX partnership.
So yes, you will be able to hold Doge on #SAFEMOONWALLET. That’s where I’ll be holding mine. #SAFEMOON is the #Evolution!
— John Karony (@CptHodl) June 13, 2021
The Dogecoin—SpaceX partnership Karony refers to is likely the DOGE-1 mission scheduled for next year. It will see a commercial lunar payload operated by Canada’s Geometric Energy Corporation (GEC) launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
GEC has said the mission will be “paid entirely with DOGE,” while SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said it would involve the “1st crypto in space.”
Newsweek has contacted GEC for comment on Karony’s claim.
SafeMoon’s rise today follows a month in which the token slid from $0.00001 on May 16 to its current value—putting it another digit away from the dollar mark.
It is currently down around 66 percent from its all-time high of $0.000013, reached on April 20.
The cryptocurrency market as a whole has increased 5.25 percent over the past day, according to CoinMarketCap, with market leader bitcoin up over 20 percent over the past seven days.
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