With new comments on Bitcoin, Elon Musk is driving the price of the cryptocurrency upwards. Critics accuse the Tesla boss of financial manipulation.
Washington DC – First hui, then ugh and now again hui. With statements about Bitcoin, Elon Musk drove the price of the cryptocurrency upwards. It is not the first time that the Tesla founder has brought investment products either a big plus or a big minus with his public statements. Critics accuse the billionaire star entrepreneur of manipulating the financial markets.
“I would like to see Bitcoin succeed,” said Musk at the industry conference “The B Word” on Wednesday (07/21/2021), which was attended by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, among others. He also reckons that Tesla will again accept Bitcoin as a means of payment.
Elon Musk can shoot Bitcoin into the sky – but also beat it down
The US electric car maker announced in March that it would start accepting cryptocurrency as a means of payment for its cars – and thus drive the currency upwards. Then, however, a U-turn followed, which triggered a significant slide in the price of Bitcoin.
In mid-May, Musk announced that Tesla would not accept Bitcoins in the future for climate protection reasons. Musk argued that the high power consumption during production and transactions with the digital currency and the associated increase in the consumption of fossil fuels are alarming. The Bitcoin course then collapsed massively.
Twitter users who apparently had invested large sums of money in the currency reacted angrily. “I lost everything with a tweet, I know that 5000 dollars mean nothing to you, but for me it was everything,” one of the users turned to Elon Musk.
Is Tesla accepting Bitcoin or not? Elon Musk and the eternal back and forth
In mid-June, Elon Musk changed his mind again and offered the prospect of wanting to accept digital money after all, but set one condition for this: The share of renewable energies related to Bitcoin must increase significantly. With his statements about Bitcoin, which drove the price in one direction or the other, Musk has been accused of manipulating the markets and wanting to profit from them. The hacker collective “Anonymous” accused the entrepreneur of destroying life with the turbulence he triggered in the crypto markets.
During the discussion on Wednesday, Musk emphasized that it currently looks like Bitcoin is moving “much more” towards renewable energy. He also denied manipulating the courses. In addition to Bitcoin, he himself also invested in the crypto currencies Ethereum and Dogecoin. He loses money if the price falls. Nevertheless, despite the massive fluctuations, he does not sell.
The crypto market, in which investors have recently suffered heavy losses, recorded a strong plus according to Elon Musk’s current remarks. Bitcoin climbed from under 25,000 to over 27,000 euros within a very short time, and the alternative coins Ethereum, Dogecoin, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash also increased.
Not only affected by Bitcoin: Elon Musk can also move stock prices
Elon Musk’s power to move financial markets with just a statement or a tweet isn’t just limited to cryptocurrencies. In the wake of the data protection controversy surrounding the Whatsapp messenger app, Musk wrote on Twitter in early 2021: “Use Signal”. Signal is a competing messenger service that is considered extremely privacy friendly.
Investors who are willing to take risks then put their money into the security of “Signal Advance” – the company has nothing to do with the app, however, but manufactures medical devices. Within a very short time, the false Signal share rose from just under 60 dollar cents to over 70 dollars. The paper then crashed again. Happy investors were able to reap a plus of almost 12,000 percent in the best case, but also lose a fortune. (Tim Vincent Dicke with AFP)
