Why Uniswap Is Up 8% today
KEY POINTS
- Just days after being released from prison, Martin Shkreli engaged in a Twitter Spaces session where he shared his new enthusiasm for cryptocurrency.
- Uniswap's price spiked 8.3% today, perhaps in light of the social media frenzy caused by Shkreli.
- He said he used Uniswap in prison and thinks DeFi is just at the beginning of its growth.
"Pharma bro" turned "crypto bro"? Love him or hate him, but Martin Shkreli is out of prison and making headlines once again.
Martin Shkreli is infamous for a few things. Some of the notable ones include purchasing Wu Tang Clan's Once Upon a Time in Shaolin album. This is an asset that was forfeited as part of his sentence, which we will get to.
He was banned from Twitter for harassing a journalist. And he's known also for buying the license to Daraprim, a pharmaceutical drug used by many AIDS and cancer patients. Well, he's not actually known for buying it, but for raising the price of the drug from $13.50 per pill to $750 per pill, virtually overnight.
These things culminated in another thing Shkreli is known for: being sent to prison for securities fraud. His sentence was for seven years but he received a shortened sentence due to good behavior. Just days after being released from prison, he joined a Twitter Spaces and spoke about crypto stating, "Uniswap is really cool. I started using Uniswap in prison."
More on Uniswap
Now a little information on Uniswap for those who don't know. Founded in 2018 by Ethereum developer Hayden Adams, Uniswap is a cryptocurrency exchange that uses a decentralized network protocol. It's run on the Ethereum blockchain and uses smart contracts to facilitate its transactions.
According to CoinMarketCap, Uniswap's price is up 8.3% today, making it $5.84. It has a 24-hour trading volume of around $209 million and a live market cap of over $4 billion. The current circulating supply is 718,823,109 UNI coins with a max supply of 1,000,000,000 UNI coins. Although it has jumped up, it is still 86.97% below its all-time high of $44.97.
The bottom line
Shkreli is certainly seen as a villain, and a cocky one at that. Which he reinforced when, after being released, he posted on Facebook saying, "Getting out of real prison is easier than getting out of Twitter prison." But his talks about Uniswap and the future of DeFi, and the social media frenzy that followed, certainly could be what helped the exchange see a price hike. Although he is wrong about many things, we will see if he is right about decentralized finance being the way of the future.
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Our Research Expert
Katie Clinebell is a freelance content creator and digital marketing strategist for FinTech, blockchain, and crypto brands. She has created award-winning campaigns for Snapple and Tai Pei Frozen Asian Food and received an Adobe Academic Achievement Award for content about Olympic athletes.
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