Oh, Elon Musk… There are times when analysts and traders alike probably think to themselves, “What would bitcoin and cryptocurrency do without you?”
Elon Musk Helps Bitcoin Return to Its Roots
In the last few days, the South African entrepreneur and CEO of both Tesla and SpaceX has likely been the cause of bitcoin’s sudden rise beyond the $34,000 market price at the time of writing. Musk saw to it that his Twitter account bio was changed to “#bitcoin.” From there, he put out the following message, assuring everyone that this was going to be happening sooner or later:
In retrospect, it was inevitable.
The funny thing is that while Musk’s maneuvers are appreciated, “inevitable” is not exactly the word most industry experts would choose. For the most part, Musk has largely been neither here nor there with bitcoin, at times praising it and at other times claiming it to be as “bs as fiat” according to one of his past social media messages.
He has also said other weird things, like bitcoin was not his “safe word.” To this day, many are still contemplating whatever the heck that means. In recent days, he has commented that he wouldn’t mind being paid in bitcoin, and even sought help from MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor regarding how to potentially convert Tesla assets into bitcoin for shareholders.
At the same time, it would have been much more understandable if Musk had changed his Twitter bio to something like “#dogecoin” considering how praising of the asset he has been in the past. He has often commented that Dogecoin was the “best coin,” while rumors swelled in early 2019 that he would potentially serve as the currency’s new CEO.
Sadly, these rumors never amounted to anything specific, but the love for Dogecoin is certainly there on Musk’s part. Now, the currency has spiked by nearly 200 percent over the weekend.
Musk’s bitcoin comments came after Robinhood – a free-trading app – announced that it would not allow its customers to trade GameStop stock along with other shares that have become particularly noticeable to bullish retail traders. This prompted criticism from several Reddit users, who claim that these stocks are now in the process of getting shorted by Wall Street hedge funds.
Rebuilding Everything
This promoted many of them to revert to cryptocurrency, one of which was Dogecoin. This potentially explains the sudden price jump it’s experienced, and it seems Musk is viewing this situation as an opportunity of sorts. His latest move is also garnering heavy praise from cryptocurrency users everywhere. Former Coinbase chief technology officer Balaji Srinivasan took to Twitter to comment:
Bitcoin becomes the flag of technology, and all web services gradually get rebuilt on crypto. We’re going back to our roots: encryption, privacy, peer-to-peer, the rights of the individual, free expression, and decentralization of power.
