- Bluesky Digital stock pumped 10-fold last week.
- Investor confusion likely drove the price spike.
- Crypto-linked stocks have soared since Donald Trump’s election victory.
What’s in a name?
For Bluesky Digital, it’s a 1,767% stock price rally over the past month.
In a case of name recognition gone wrong, Toronto-based blockchain firm Bluesky Digital’s stock price surged in November as investors may have mistaken it for social media platform Bluesky.
Since Donald Trump’s election on November 5, Bluesky Digital’s stock price has shot up from $0.06 to $0.56, or about 833%.
The stock moves come amid a surge in users for the Bluesky platform.
One portfolio manager told Bloomberg that the jump in share price “may be driven by name confusion” with the social media platform.
At the prompting of Canadian regulators, Bluesky Digital clarified in a filing that the moves were not linked to corporate actions.
The blockchain firm said “management is unaware of any material change in the corporation’s operations that would account for the recent increase in market activity.”
Bluesky Digital’s stock surge has coincided with its namesake’s buzzing appeal among social media users, especially former X users.
Coincidentally, Jack Dorsey who co-founded Twitter, the former name for X, also co-founded Bluesky, the social media platform.
Market observers say internet users defecting from X to Dorsey’s Bluesky are unhappy with the platform, as well as with some who baulked at Elon Musk’s role in backing Trump.
SpaceX and Tesla CEO Musk acquired Twitter in 2022 and changed its name to X the following year.
Musk’s critics say X has become a platform overrun by bots, scam ads, and extreme content.
Bluesky’s userbase has grown to more than 20 million ― the platform had 6 million users three months ago. Much of that growth has happened since Trump’s election victory earlier this month.
Part of the confusion for investors might lie in their shared decentralised technology objectives.
Crypto-linked stocks have surged significantly since Trump’s election victory. MicroStrategy, the company with the largest Bitcoin balance sheet, has achieved a new all-time high stock price for the first time in 20 years.
Adding to the mix-up: The exchange ticker for Bluesky Digital, which enables companies to adopt web3 technology, is BTC. BTC is also the symbol for Bitcoin.
Meanwhile, Bluesky, the social media platform, is developing a blockchain-based network for social media platforms.
The network aims to create a federated social media structure that would allow users to create an endless stream of micro social media sites within Bluesky’s open-source network.
Since it’s a federated system, each micro social media site can be populated by existing Bluesky users without any additional steps.
Osato Avan-Nomayo is our Nigeria-based DeFi correspondent. He covers DeFi and tech. To share tips or information about stories, please contact him at osato@dlnews.com.
