Musk Denies Manipulating
On Sunday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the company would resume allowing bitcoin transactions when there’s confirmation of reasonable clean energy use by bitcoin miners.
Musk made his announcement on his favorite social media platform, Twitter. He was responding to statements by Magda Wierzycka, the CEO of South African asset management company Sygnia. Wierzycka claimed Musk’s frequent tweets on bitcoin were “market manipulation” and should have prompted an inquiry by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
In February, Tesla announced that it had bought $1.5 billion in bitcoin and would start accepting bitcoin as a form of payment for its electric vehicles. However, three months later, the company had a change of heart.
In May, Tesla stopped allowing its customers to pay for vehicles with bitcoin due to worries that cryptocurrency mining, which requires powerful computers that use a lot of energy, is dangerous to the climate. Musk tweeted, “We are concerned about rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal, which has the worst emissions of any fuel.” After Musk announced, Tesla would stop accepting bitcoin, the price plummeted.
Musk’s frequent tweets about bitcoin seem to send the price up or down, leaving many to accuse him of market manipulation. But on Sunday, Musk denied these claims, tweeting, “Tesla sold roughly 10% of its bitcoin holdings to confirm BTC could be liquidated easily without moving (the) market.”
After Elon’s tweet confirming Tesla would eventually resume bitcoin transactions, the price of Bitcoin shot up. Do you think the strange connection between bitcoin’s price and Elon’s tweets are merely a coincidence, or do you think there is more to the story?
I am not a financial advisor and my comments should never be taken as financial advice. Investments come with risk, so always do your research and analysis beforehand.