Original｜Odaily Odaily(@OdailyChina)
Author: Wenser (@wenser 2010)
On July 22, Musk changed his profile picture to a laser eye at the request of X platform user @Chriswinig.
Due to the existence of the Bitcoin Meme #LaserRayUntil100K (meaning that the laser eye avatar will remain until the Bitcoin price breaks through $100,000), this move is seen as Musk's another open support for the cryptocurrency industry (although he has now changed back to his original avatar).
For a time, Musk once again became the "cryptocurrency focus", and it has been three years since he last changed his profile picture to "laser-eyed girl". Odaily will sort out and summarize Musk's related behaviors and concepts in the cryptocurrency industry in this article, so that readers can understand this "tech madman" behind SpaceX and Tesla from more perspectives.
Conceptual prototype: starting from ETH
In 2018, after experiencing a surge in prices at the beginning of the year, ETH gradually fell from $1,410 to less than $300 at the end of August. Industry insiders' belief in ETH and cryptocurrencies faced the first major test.
Although Musk's attitude towards cryptocurrencies is ambiguous and even mostly sarcastic, he has indeed paid close attention to cryptocurrencies including ETH.
On August 29, Musk wrote on Twitter, "At this point in time, even if it's a scam, I want ETH." Although the price of ETH continued to decline and even fell below the $100 mark at the end of the year, Musk's "friendly attitude" towards cryptocurrencies did promote the education and popularization of cryptocurrencies including ETH and BTC to a certain extent.
It is worth mentioning that whether Tesla supported cryptocurrency payments and whether Musk used cryptocurrency in the process of privatizing Tesla were also topics that many people on the Internet talked about. The SEC even sued Musk for making "false and misleading statements."
ETH price on August 29, 2018
On April 30, 2019, seven months later, Musk posted again: "Ethereum". Just when people thought he was "shill" to express his optimism about ETH, seven minutes later, he added in the comment section: "jk" (usually regarded as an abbreviation of Joke). Only then did people realize that he was making fun of Ethereum as a joke.
Later that day, he posted another question: "What should be developed on Ethereum?" The two highly-praised answers in the comment section also represented people's completely different attitudes towards cryptocurrencies at the time: one view was that it was not known whether Ethereum was a suitable platform, but perhaps Tesla's micropayment economy could be an interesting sub-project; another view was that the only role of Ethereum was to make founders rich overnight under the guise of decentralization.
Musk's tweets and highly praised comments
These views may have influenced Musk's "view on cryptocurrency" to a certain extent at the time, but this will soon change with the spread of DOGE.
Concept change: the birth of the DOGE Godfather
On April Fools’ Day, April 1, 2019, Musk was elected as the CEO of Dogecoin by Dogecoin Twitter fans, and then he changed his Twitter profile to “Former CEO of Dogecoin”. Musk and DOGE have an indissoluble bond since then.
On April 3, Musk commented on an article about Bitcoin, saying, "The value of DOGE may be different." But the next day, on April 4, he deleted his profile. It can be said that Musk's preference for changing profiles and profile pictures is already a precedent.
In July 2020, Musk once again "openly shill" DOGE - when asked about Bitcoin, Musk replied on Twitter that he "only buys Dogecoin", and posted a picture of a "Dogecoin sandstorm" sweeping over a city called "Global Financial System", saying "this is inevitable". DOGE once broke through 0.0036 USDT, with a daily increase of nearly 20%.
Musk tweeted a picture
In December 2020, Musk mentioned DOGE again on Twitter and said that Bitcoin is almost as bullshit as legal currency. Influenced by this news, DOGE rose by more than 12% in 24 hours.
Since 2021, Musk has mentioned DOGE more and more frequently, and the "intimacy" between the two is about to reach its peak, and Musk will "put an end to it" personally.
From January to March 2021, Musk mentioned DOGE many times and praised it, calling it "the people's cryptocurrency" and "the most interesting cryptocurrency" and expressed support for Coinbase to list DOGE. In April, after Musk posted a picture of a "dog barking at the moon", DOGE's daily increase once exceeded 200%, and then skyrocketed 5 times in just 5 days. Just when people thought that Musk had firmly established his position as the "Godfather of DOGE" and would lead DOGE "TO DA MOON" (fly to the moon), Musk finally "couldn't hold it anymore".
Musk XDOGE image NFT created by Beeple
On May 9, on an American variety show "Saturday Night Live", Musk first said, "DOGE is the future of currency. It is an unstoppable financial instrument that will take over the world. DOGE is as real as dollar bills." But under the host's almost boring questioning, Musk finally compromised-admitting that Dogecoin is a "hustle."
Although Musk later highly praised the role of DOGE in transaction costs and payment convenience, and even said that it "is expected to be more efficient than the Lightning Network", and announced in January 2022 that some products in Tesla's US online store would accept DOGE as a payment option, the relationship between the two is far less than before.
Since then, Musk's view on cryptocurrency has become more rational, and of course, it can also be regarded as a kind of "maturity".
Upgrading concepts: Cryptocurrency supporters
If Musk's attitude towards cryptocurrency before 2021 was ridicule, jokes and even mockery (he once called "cryptocurrency" his "safe word"), after 2021, his attitude towards cryptocurrency has undoubtedly been greatly "upgraded" - this is not only influenced by DOGE, but also more thinking from the cognitive dimension of "monetary system".
In February 2021, Tesla bought BTC for the first time when the price of Bitcoin was less than $390 million, spending a total of $1.5 billion. At that time, Musk believed that Bitcoin would soon be widely accepted by traditional financial professionals, and said, "I am a Bitcoin supporter and should have bought Bitcoin eight years ago. I regret not joining this feast earlier."
In early May 2021, before appearing on the show, Musk retweeted a video titled "Musk says Dogecoin may be the future of cryptocurrency," and captioned it with "Cryptocurrency is promising, but please invest with caution!" That month, Musk said that cryptocurrency is a means to combat currency depreciation and government capital control; later, when netizens asked him what he thought of those who were angry with him because of cryptocurrency, Musk responded, "The real battle is between fiat currency and cryptocurrency. Overall, I support the latter."
In September 2021, he said at an offline event that “the U.S. government should avoid trying to regulate the cryptocurrency market.”
In December 2021, in response to a tweet by Sam Altman, then president of YC, who highly praised the investment returns of Web3, Musk commented, "Web3 sounds like bullshit." Subsequently, he tweeted several times to satirize the concept of Web3, saying that "the current Web3 is more like a marketing buzzword than reality" and proposed that "NFT is another form of the US dollar."
As time enters 2022, Musk's main task has become "acquiring Twitter", but cryptocurrency remains his key area of focus. In March, when responding to comments from netizens, he said: "I still hold and will not sell my Bitcoin, Ethereum or Dogecoin."
After a series of negotiations, acquisitions and counter-acquisitions, free speech, prosecution and counter-prosecution, and other disputes and twists and turns, Musk spent $44 billion in October to officially complete the acquisition and privatization of Twitter, and merged it into the original X company, and even renamed Twitter to the "X" platform. Influenced by this news, cryptocurrencies such as DOGE and SHIB once soared. It is worth mentioning that this acquisition was also supported by the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, and this news was later confirmed by the founder CZ.
In addition, in May 2022, Musk briefly changed his Twitter avatar to a picture of BAYC NFT, and then replaced it, saying that "it is fungible." Influenced by this news, the price of APE token fell below US$16, once again highlighting its huge influence on the cryptocurrency field.
At this point, Musk owns Internet companies such as X (formerly Twitter), Tesla, SpaceX, new energy vehicle companies, and rocket companies, and his influence on the cryptocurrency industry is still "huge."
Conclusion: Participants in the cryptocurrency wave, not spectators
In 2023, Tesla CFO Zach Kirkhorn disclosed that the company sold most of its Bitcoin last year. According to SEC documents, Tesla earned about $192 million from cryptocurrency investments.
In May, Musk posted a picture of the NFT project Milady on Twitter, causing the project's floor price to surge by nearly 100% (also mentioned in the previous article introducing the founder of Milady, "The Unknown Story of Charlotte Fang, the Founder of NFT "Cult" Milady").
In October, Tesla's financial report showed that the company did not buy or sell any Bitcoin in Q3 2023, and had not conducted any buying or selling operations for five consecutive quarters. As of September 30, Tesla held approximately 9,720 Bitcoins with a market value of approximately US$275.6 million.
Since the beginning of this year, Musk's main focus has returned to the Meme coin field, including:
In January, Musk changed the profile of the X account to "(CTO) Chief Troll Officer". Influenced by this news, a Meme coin TROLL deployed in April 2023 finally stood out, and its market value once exceeded 85 million US dollars.
In February, Musk tweeted “I love puppies”, and the subsequent meme project PUPPIES increased by more than 1,100% in two weeks in April, with a market value of approximately US$30 million.
In March, Musk responded to a tweet from Dawkins, the creator of the word "Meme" and the author of "The Selfish Gene", which also led to the rise of some tokens in the Meme sector. In addition, he also posted a picture of a dog in a hat on the X platform on the 18th to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. As a result, the related Meme coin WIF rose by more than 30% in 24 hours.
In May, Musk posted a photo on the X platform paying tribute to DOGE. As a result, DOGE broke through 0.17 USDT in the short term, with a 24-hour increase of 8.66%. On May 30, market news said that Musk had provided some cryptocurrency advice to Trump, and the relationship between the two quickly heated up.
As it is the year of the US presidential election, Musk has frequently expressed his views on this. Recently, he has bluntly expressed his support for Trump and even "changed his profile picture to celebrate" after US Democratic presidential candidate Biden withdrew from the election.
In addition, according to Tesla's latest second quarter 2024 financial report, the company still did not sell or buy any Bitcoin in the second quarter of this year, which is the eighth consecutive quarter without any buying and selling operations. It currently holds about 9,720 Bitcoins, with a purchase cost of approximately US$337 million, which has now increased in value to US$624 million.
Looking back at his love-hate relationship with cryptocurrency over the past few years, we can see that although Musk is not engaged in this industry, he still has great enthusiasm and concerns about it. In addition, he is opposed to excessive government regulation and high capital control. To some extent, he can also be regarded as a "participant with the spirit of cryptography."
After all, as he said, “I never said people should invest in cryptocurrencies,” but “the hope is that cryptocurrencies will improve the efficiency of the core of money.”
