Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX is arguably the greatest technological entrepreneur of our time. Recently, he gave his 2 cents on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency during an episode of the ARK Invest’s FYI podcast.
During the podcast, the host took a moment to veer away from Tesla and asked Musk about cryptocurrency, asking whether Musk believes Bitcoin will become the only native cryptocurrency of the internet.
In response, Musk said:
“I think the bitcoin structure was quite brilliant. It seems like there’s some merit to Ethereum as well, and maybe some of the others. But, you know, I’m not sure if it would be a good use of Tesla resources to get into crypto.”
Elon Musk Says Crypto Will Replace Paper Money
In addition to his positive comments on Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH), Musk also noted that he liked cryptocurrency for its fluid ability to transfer value and bypass currency controls.
“It bypasses currency controls, and crypto is a far better way to transfer value than pieces of paper. That’s for sure. Without a doubt.”
Apart from his positive comments on crypto, Musk also pointed out what he thinks the downsides are, specifically about Bitcoin and the significant amount of computational energy it requires to secure the network.
“I think actually one of the downsides of crypto is that, computationally, is that it’s quite energy intensive. So there have to be some kind of constraints on the creation of crypto. So, but it’s very energy intensive to create an incremental bitcoin at this point.”
Though Bitcoin is energy intensive, Musk noted it is only energy intensive “at this point,” This leads one to speculate that with Musk’s engineering ingenuity in the energy sector, at some point in the future he may be able to fix this problem with sustainable energy sources.
Elon Musk and Bitcoin
Since Musk is such an innovative and prominent individual in the technology sector, the crypto industry has been eager for a long time for Musk to share his thoughts on Bitcoin and crypto. For the most part, he’s kept quiet, as his focus is on other things.
However, in October of last year Musk made a mysterious tweet about buying Bitcoin, which ramped up speculation in the crypto industry. During the recent podcast, Musk admitted this was a joke that actually got him in trouble and led to his Twitter account getting suspended.
Explaining the reasoning, Musk said:
“Bitcoin and Ethereum scammers were so rampant on Twitter I decided to join in and I said at one point wanna buy some bitcoin? Then I got my account suspended ’cause obviously there was like some automatic rule that if you try to sell bitcoin or something, and I was just joking.”
Therefore, it is understandable that Musk is largely quiet about crypto. However, it is now known that he, in fact, is in favor of cryptocurrency, believes it is the future, and thinks it will replace paper money.
Do you think Elon Musk owns some Bitcoin and Ethereum? Let us know what you think in the comment section below.
