A single Musk tweet could move Bitcoin 15% before most people read it. Algorithms scraped Twitter in real-time and executed trades faster than human cognition.
Retail investors on the r/wallstreetbets subreddit coordinated to buy GameStop shares and call options, forcing hedge funds shorting the stock into a squeeze. GME rose from $17 at the start of January to $483 on January 28. Melvin Capital, which had been GME's largest short, lost $6.8 billion and wound down the following year. Robinhood halted buying at the peak of the squeeze, triggering congressional hearings and a permanent shift in how retail investors viewed the platform.
Elon Musk's hosting of Saturday Night Live on May 8 had been hyped for weeks as a Dogecoin catalyst. Twitter-scraping algorithms were positioned to buy on any Musk mention that fit a bullish pattern. Instead, Musk called Dogecoin 'a hustle' on live TV. The algorithms flipped short immediately. DOGE fell about 30 percent inside 24 hours, including the move that happened between the SNL broadcast on the East Coast and the later broadcast on the West Coast.
Hackers took control of the Associated Press's verified Twitter account and posted 'Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured.' The Dow fell 143 points in three minutes before AP denied it. $136 billion of market value evaporated and returned inside four minutes.