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Gambling toy:
the cryptocurrency Bitcoin
Photo:
Jens Kalaene / DPA
Once again Elon Musk has massively moved the price of Bitcoin with a message, on Sunday the Tesla boss pushed the crypto currency below the $ 45,000 mark with a tweet. Bitcoin was quoted at $ 43,000 on Monday morning on the Bitstamp trading platform. Musk responded with the word "Indeed" to a Twitter message from a user that Bitcoin owners would be annoyed in the coming quarter if it was discovered that Tesla had sold the rest of its Bitcoins. One could not blame Musk for this in view of the hatred that met him, it was said.
It was initially unclear whether the company actually sold its holdings or whether Musk was referring to the criticism of him from the Bitcoin scene. Tesla announced in the middle of last week that it would no longer accept Bitcoins as a means of payment and would stop trading the cryptocurrency - due to environmental concerns.
The group made this decision mainly because of the rapidly increasing consumption of fossil fuels for the production of and transactions with Bitcoins. Environmentalists have been making this accusation for a long time, which Musk should not have missed. In any case, the Bitcoin rate crashed as a result. At the same time, Musk assured that he would remain an advocate of Bitcoin: "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." The company also does not want to sell its Bitcoin holdings.
Tesla announced in February that it had invested $ 1.5 billion in Bitcoin. The announcement gave Bitcoin and Tesla shares a powerful boost: Tesla benefited twice at the time. In the most recent fiscal quarter, the company had sold its previously purchased Bitcoins for almost $ 300 million and, according to its own statements, earned around $ 100 million.
It is remarkable how Musk repeatedly moves the value of cyber money with statements on the market for unregulated cryptocurrencies.
The Dogecoin, originally conceived as a parody of Bitcoin, reacted on Friday with a price jump of almost 30 percent to a tweet from the Tesla boss, which means that the Dogecoin has increased by almost 12,000 percent since the beginning of the year.
With a total of almost 69 billion dollars, Dogecoin is the fourth largest crypto currency in terms of market value.
The Tesla boss had recently praised the efficiency of Dogecoin transactions via Twitter and described the digital currency as promising.
However, it was unclear whether he was referring to energy consumption, user-friendliness or the potential as a means of payment, observers said.
rei / Reuters / dpa-afx