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Elon Musk visiting a Tesla plant: Tweets with risks and side effects
Photo: ODD ANDERSEN / AFP
Actually, Tesla builds electric cars.
But instead of new models, Tesla boss Elon Musk is again making headlines with his company's cryptocurrency investments.
At the weekend, he seemed to hint with a tweet that Tesla could sell part of its billion dollar Bitcoin holdings.
A denial followed on Monday: "To clarify speculation: Tesla has not sold any Bitcoins."
The Tesla boss's tweets brought the price of the digital currency Bitcoin up and down.
On Monday, the price fell by more than ten percent.
A daily low of $ 42,185 was reached on the Bitstamp trading platform.
That is the lowest level since February.
Other digital currencies such as Ether, XRP or Dogecoin also fell significantly.
Recently, Bitcoin & Co. recovered somewhat, so that a Bitcoin cost $ 44,500.
However, the price was still clearly in the red.
The trigger for the guesswork was the Twitter post of an anonymous Twitter user.
“Bitcoiners will slap themselves in the coming quarter if they find out that Tesla has sold the rest of its Bitcoin holdings.
With the amount of hatred that Elon Musk has, I wouldn't blame him, ”he wrote.
Musk replied to this, also on Twitter: “Indeed.” It was initially unclear whether Musk was referring to the Bitcoin sales or the criticism of him.
On Monday morning, however, Musk made it clear that it was not about Bitcoin sales.
In February, Tesla announced that it had invested $ 1.5 billion in Bitcoin.
The company also started accepting Bitcoin as a form of payment.
Musk reversed this step last week with reference to Bitcoin's poor environmental record.
"Cryptocurrency is a good idea on many levels and we believe in a promising future, but this cannot be at the expense of the environment," said Musk in a statement.
Bitcoin, the oldest and best-known digital currency, then lost a lot of its value.
mic / dpa
