Even if you only took a glimpse at “crypto Twitter” in recent weeks, you had to notice that Elon Musk has been tweeting about cryptocurrencies. A LOT. To some, this isn’t surprising. Musk works on space technology and constantly follows developments in other industries. But what will it mean for the market?
Elon and Bitcoin
While Musk has commented on Bitcoin in the past, he never really addressed the underlying technology. In 2013 he noted that Bitcoin is definitely an innovation, but he claimed it will mostly be used for illegal transactions. Drawing conclusions from that interview alone, however, won’t give us a clear picture on where he stands. For that, we have to fast forward to the recent future.
On January 10th Musk tweeted that “Bitcoin is *not* my safeword” (after previously saying it was his safeword before immediately saying he was joking). Whatever he meant, the result was even more chatter about BTC on Twitter. For the next few weeks he continued to hint at his interest in Bitcoin until he finally announced that Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) would buy a few BTC itself.
Most of us would expect that the finance and tech-savvy Musk knows a thing or two about crypto, but it seems he needed a tweet from business intelligence guru and Bitcoin enthusiast Michael Saylor to even think about buying BTC as a part of Tesla’s hedging strategy.
Elon and Dogecoin
Available evidence suggests that after Musk realized the potential of cryptocurrencies, he started learning more about them and soon began singing the praises of one currency in particular – Dogecoin. You can’t blame him for that. The Dogecoin community has to be the most wholesome one on the internet. Elon joined the fun and memes for a while until he realized that Doge isn’t distributed fairly.
As with Bitcoin, he went back and forth with Doge. He recently showed his support only to raise concern a few days later. In the end, it seems that this relationship worked out fine as Musk made it clear both he and his kids own, and mine, Dogecoin.
Elon and Cardano
The newest cryptocurrency that seems to have caught Musk’s eye is Cardano. He recently changed his Twitter profile picture to feature a fork literally stabbed into a road accompanied by the bio: “meta for k.”
This seems to be a reference to the upcoming Mary hard fork scheduled for March 1 mainnet deployment. Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, is convinced this is the case.
On the Flipside
- While he and his tweets are lightning rods for SEC scrutiny, Musk also generates a lot of attention from potential crypto investors. Thanks to him, all eyes are on Cardano now.
- Having so much attention focused on one person who seems to be well-versed in memes can have a positive long-term effect on the cryptocurrency space as a whole.
Will the Rocket Man eventually do for Cardano what he did for Bitcoin and Doge? Only time can tell. All signs seem to be pointing in that direction, but remember, the Prophet from Pretoria isn’t always sober when he’s tweeting. And Elon aside, it is always best to do your own research and invest responsibly.