In January, Tesla CEO Elon Musk mentioned Bitcoin in an innuendo-filled tweet that went viral on Twitter and within the media in the industry. At the time, the technologist wrote that BTC “is *not* my safe word” in a seeming attempt to rile up the crypto community.
On May 1st, Musk continued his attempts to play with the feelings of Bitcoin enthusiasts, tweeting about it twice, eliciting a strong response from every corner of the cryptocurrency industry for the second time in months.
Elon Musk Laughs At Bitcoin Tweet
Elon Musk has created quite the stir in the financial world over the past 12 hours, tweeting “[The] Tesla stock price is too high imo,” resulting in the asset collapsing by approximately 10% during the day’s trading session.
Although many holders of TSLA saw Musk’s statement as controversial because of the seeming effect it had on their investment, the operator of the @Bitcoin account on Twitter, which has over one million followers, decided to leverage the situation to tweet that the “Bitcoin price is too low imo.”
The Tesla chief executive surprisingly responded, first with the tweet below that has Musk laughing at the comment.
Musk followed this up ten minutes later by asking @Bitcoin how much it would cost for “some anime Bitcoin,” eliciting a strong response from individuals in the cryptocurrency space like Samson Mow, Hodlnaut, and Melik Manukyan.
🤣🤣
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 1, 2020
He’s Actually a Fan of Crypto
While Musk’s latest comments regarding Bitcoin were obviously made in jest, he is known to be somewhat of a fan of cryptocurrency and blockchain.
In an early 2019 episode of ARK Invest’s podcast, Musk told investor Cathie Wood that he thinks Bitcoin’s structure is “quite brilliant,” before adding that Ethereum and “maybe some of the others” have merit too.
Per previous reports from NewsBTC, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO added that BTC is interesting as it enables consumers to bypass currency controls in nations embroiled in financial and political conflict:
“Yeah. It bypasses currency controls. Yeah. Paper money is going away, and crypto is a far better way to transfer value than pieces of paper, that’s for sure”
Speaking to a panel of Tesla enthusiasts in an episode of the “Third Row Tesla” podcast, Musk elaborated on his thoughts regarding cryptocurrency.
Echoing his comment from the previous podcast, he said that Bitcoin and other digital assets have functionality of enabling illegal (but not necessarily immoral) transactions:
“There are transactions that are not within the bounds of the law — there are obviously many laws in different countries — and normally cash is used for these transactions. But in order for illegal transactions to occur, the cash must also be used for legal transactions. You need an illegal-to-legal bridge. That’s where crypto comes in.”
Photo by Mohamed Nohassi on Unsplash
