Image Credit: CNBC.com
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies which were already facing extreme volatility in the past few weeks are now at the receiving end of Tesla CEO Elon Musk. On Saturday, Musk tweeted “Goods & Services are the real economy, any form of money is simply the accounting thereof. ”
Goods & services are the real economy, any form of money is simply the accounting thereof
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 5, 2021
The effect of Musk’s tweet could be seen on the price of Bitcoin which fell by 4.12% to $35,541 in the last 24 hours. The Tesla and SpaceX founder faced flak from crypto enthusiasts for his latest opinion following which he defended his position by saying, “Don’t kill what you hate, Save what you love.”
Cryptocurrencies in general and Bitcoin in particular have been on a downward trend for some time.The Chinese government had last month launched a crackdown on mining and trading of Bitcoin, resulting in its price falling to half of its highest value. The Chinese social media website, Weibo, also took part in the crackdown by blocking some crypto influencers on its platform, citing violation of its community rules.
Elon Musk, who has more than 50 million followers on Twitter, is known for influencing the prices of shares and digital coins due to his large following which take his opinions very seriously and act accordingly. While in past he had been quite supportive of cryptocurrencies, now he has taken a U-turn. Earlier in the month of May, his company carmaker Tesla had stopped accepting payments through Bitcoins. Musk had then defended his decision saying that “we are concerned about rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal, which has the worst emissions of any fuel”
Tesla & Bitcoin pic.twitter.com/YSswJmVZhP
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 12, 2021