Some of the latest news in cryptocurrency revolves around recent remarks by none other than Elon Musk, who is suggesting that he is in Bitcoin for the long haul. Will we now see coin values displayed above the current holding pattern around $55,000?
“I have not sold any of my Bitcoin.” Musk tweeted April 26.
Martin Young reports at Cointelegraph that Dave Portnoy of Barstool Sports had tweeted his opinion that Musk’s past acquisitions of Bitcoin may amount to a “pump and dump” scheme, where the billionaire magnate wanted to inflate the coin value and then divest at the right time.
In response, Musk essentially said that is poppycock, while admitting that Tesla sold 10% of its coin holdings, with a hilarious assertion that the small divestment was done to “prove (BTC) liquidity,” as if Tesla needed a reason to trim its massive Bitcoin holdings by 10%, as opposed to, say, 50% or 75%.
For anyone who needs further evidence that Tesla is still heavily invested in Bitcoin, Young also reports that Tesla plans to take Bitcoin in customer payment for vehicles, and not convert it to fiat, which is unusual for any merchant, and adds to the speculation that TSLA has, in some ways, become something of a BTC pure play.
There is, however, reasonable concern about how Elon Musk moves markets. Musk is on record as boosting not only Bitcoin, but the much smaller and more controversial Dogecoin. Meanwhile, Musk’s Tesla stock has exploded 800% in the last year, and made other market changes well beyond the purview as a carmaker. People have referred to Musk’s juice in equities and crypto as “jet feul” for a particular asset, as when Musk bought a bunch of DOGE for his newborn son.
Is it right for one individual to have such clout in the market? Some experts say it’s not right, and it’s not wrong, it just is. The reality is that today’s market is very much vulnerable to all sorts of pressures from Internet-connected parties everywhere. Take that into account when you’re making cryptocurrency decisions, or really, any financial decisions at all.