Elon Musk teases with Bitcoin tweets again… but the markets aren’t buying it
Serial crypto meddler Elon Musk offered up an olive branch to Bitcoin tonight as he hinted about helping to solve cryptocurrency’s environmental impact woes.
The Tesla supremo’s persistent obsession with erratic tweets about crypto have been a mainstay of the 2021 market narrative, and today he delivered another curious plot twist.
Musk is widely credited with being the driving force behind Bitcoin’s epic all-time high above $62,000 after telling the social media world that Tesla would be accepting payment in Bitcoin for its vehicles. The announcement came hand-in-hand with news that the electric car company had also bought up a staggering $1.5 billion in the flagship cryptocurrency.
Alas, anyone hoping to climb aboard the 49-year-old’s Bitcoin-fuelled rocket ship to moon would be swiftly disappointed a week later as the South African dramatically aired his deep concern over its carbon footprint and the amount of fossil fuels being burnt up in the process of mining.
Pulling a u-turn over the Bitcoin payment scheme, the company decided it would no longer accept BTC until its impact on the environment was massively reduced.
His sudden denouncement of the world’s most dominant digital asset sent shockwaves throughout the crypto world, triggering a downward spiral of prices across the board. Pushed by further negative backdrops – such as China’s oddly-timed reiteration of its instructions to businesses over Bitcoin – cryptocurrency as a whole seemed to take an alarming backward step.
After a concerning weekend, though, where BTC bottomed out at $32,181 after quickly flicking a wick to $31,079 and finding itself at precisely half of it’s all-time high value, the market was forging a robust and resilient comeback.
Exiting Sunday slightly below $34,000, the price reached $39,580 on Monday and seemed destined to re-establish itself above $40,000 once more.
READ MORE: Bitcoin rocked by Elon Musk’s dramatic Tesla announcement
And then came Elon Musk’s latest intervention via the medium of Twitter.
“Spoke with North American Bitcoin miners,” he declared.
“They committed to publish current & planned renewable usage & to ask miners WW to do so. Potentially promising.”
Nothing really happened.
The Musk magic touch which had been so guaranteed in the past to move prices – be it Bitcoin or the running joke of Doge – did not cause a sudden spike in value.
Truth be be told, the price of Bitcoin actually fell by $600 minutes after his announcement.
Those dropped dollars may have been a timely coincidence, but the hourly closes since Elon Musk’s apparent return to a warm glow over BTC have shown little interest in the SpaceX chief’s latest ramblings.
The question now, as the crypto world slowly digests the latest tweet, appears to be more about how tiresome Bitcoin lovers are growing over Musk’s monotonous meanderings, rather than how far he can swing the market with whimsical words.