Why Did Elon Musk Tweet About Ethereum?
Elon Musk has finally came to a deal with the Securities and Exchange Commission regarding a dispute over his “bad tweets” about Tesla’s production, and about what he can or cannot share on Twitter. It now looks like Musk will have to clear some of his Tesla-related tweets with a lawyer before he writes them.
Just for a reminder, last summer, Musk tweeted that he had secured funding to sell his electric car company at $420 per share. The statement proved to be untrue, ultimately costing Musk personally his chairmanship of the company and $20 million.
We’ll see how this is going to go but, until then, SEC didn’t say anything about permission to write about cryptos now did they?
We guess Musk had the same thought when he decided to some fun with crypto Twitter yesterday. In just one word, he drew in the entire crypto community to the mass hysteria. Twitter simply said “Ethereum”.
jk
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 30, 2019
And, of course, what happened next is that price started to rise almost immediately. Even though he quickly added tweet: “JK”, at the time of the writing, ETH was still up, although slight 0,04% to $157.85. However, a lot of followers are asking the same question: did “JK” comment came after the SEC resolution?
Lol good shit Elon 😂😂 pic.twitter.com/WUe5ETXXqU
— Chris Ragotero (@CuteBoyQ) April 30, 2019
Twitter went wild, so famous @hodlhodl twitted:
One of us! One of us! One of us! pic.twitter.com/nivc75R6Fz
— hodlholdonaut (@HodlHold) April 30, 2019
And of course, it wouldn’t be complete if the founder of Ethereum himself, Vitalik Buterin didn’t answer as well, inviting Musk to the next conference:
Stop giving away free ETH! 🤣🤣
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 30, 2019
The conference is hosted by the Ethereum Foundation every year, serving as a place where Ethereum team members can speak about new products, approaches, and technologies. In his response Musk is referencing Buterin’s long-time Twitter username – ‘Vitalik Non-giver of Ether’, which itself is a reference to the prevalence of crypto giveaway scams that use Vitalik’s name.
That made some followers pretty happy:
OMG!!! Vitalik and Elon are talking #ethereum ! https://t.co/XiLptqt7qB
— The Crypto Lark (@TheCryptoLark) April 30, 2019
The Twitter thread grew longer with each passing minute, as Justin Sun came to shilling Tron and Bittorrent.
TRON
— Justin Sun (@justinsuntron) April 30, 2019
A similar tweet was sent by Gabor Gurbacs, the CEO and Digital Asset Director at VanEck said:
We live in a parallel universe. Full stop. https://t.co/1aGo6U9bgk
— Gabor Gurbacs (@gaborgurbacs) April 30, 2019
This whole thing isn’t actually surprising because Musk was coquetting with cryptos before. At the beginning of April, he called Dogecoin “his favorite cryptocurrency”.
His praise for the meme-inspired asset came in response to an April Fool’s Day poll posted the day before by the official Dogecoin account asking who should be the cryptocurrency’s next CEO (an absurd notion on its face, since crypto projects are supposed to be decentralized).
Be as it may, Musk won with 54 percent of the vote and after his tweet.
Musk and Dorsey Pushing Crypto Prices
Before that Musk praised bitcoin as well calling it “quite brilliant” and adding:
“It bypasses currency controls … Paper money is going away. And crypto is a far better way to transfer values than a piece of paper, that’s for sure.”
Earlier this year the bitcoin and cryptocurrency markets were enlivened by comments from Musk but also the Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey.
Dorsey said in one of his interviews:
“I believe the internet will have a native currency and I don’t know if it’s bitcoin. I think it will be [bitcoin] given all the tests it has been through and the principles behind it, how it was created.”
Musk however, said it’s “very energy intensive to create bitcoin at this point” and it may not be “a good use of Tesla’s resources to get involved in crypto.”
The truth is, nowadays the cryptocurrency fanatics are constantly being wary of big movements in the market. Any positive or negative piece of news has a considerable impact on the price of the cryptocurrency almost instantly. This highlights the vulnerability of the markets, currently.
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