Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla has gotten “crypto Twitter” abuzz, this time, tweeting about Ethereum, the second-ranked cryptocurrency according to market capitalization. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin took advantage of the situation to educate the tech billionaire on the useful applications that can be built on the emerging technology.
First bitcoin, Then Doge, Now Ethereum
In a tweet published in the early hours of Tuesday (April 30, 2019), UTC time zone, the Tesla CEO posted the word “Ethereum.” Apparently, the tweet was only a meant to be taken as a joke as Musk’s subsequent post said: “jk” (just kidding).
As has happened on previous occasions, Musk’s tweet did see significant traction within the cryptocurrency community on Twitter. Buterin even responded to the tweet, inviting the Tesla CEO to the Ethereum Devcon which begins later in the year.
In response, the price of ETH did experience a slight $5 spike and is up more than 2.5 percent over the last 24 hours.
Poking Fun at the SEC?
Musk appeared to be having a laugh, even slightly ribbing Buterin in some of his replies. Some commentators suggest that Musk’s tweets were a slight dig at U.S. regulators following the Tesla CEO’s recent run-ins with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Back in August 2018, Musk got into hot water with the SEC over a tweet where the Tesla chief said he’d take the company public for $420. As part of the for the case, all subsequent tweets from Musk must be approved by a securities lawyer.
Tuesday’s tweet wasn’t the first time Musk would court attention in the cryptocurrency scene. As previously reported by , the Tesla CEO called bitcoin “interesting” but declared that the company had to plans to adopt the cryptocurrency.
Back in 2018, Musk was arguably one of the more public figures to spread fake cryptocurrency giveaways on Twitter. The Tesla chief also recently referred to himself as the Dogecoin CEO before “resigning” the position moments later.
Buterin Educates Musk on Blockchain Viability
Jokes aside, Buterin did offer some insight on the useful applications that could be built on the Ethereum blockchain in response to a query posed by Musk. The Ethereum co-founder mentioned a few non-financial blockchain applications involving personal data and registries to mention a few.
Buterin has on previous occasions advocated on the need for more non-financial blockchain applications. According to Buterin, once scalability and UX functionality improves, the development of these systems should become a priority for blockchain stakeholders.
Published at Tue, 30 Apr 2019 19:14:07 +0000
