Led by Elon Musk, Tesla famously purchased $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin (BTC) in early 2021 and announced plans to accept BTC as payment for its products.
Within months though, Musk — proclaiming himself worried about the massive amounts of energy required to secure the bitcoin network — said Tesla would no longer accept bitcoin for payment until he was satisfied bitcoin wasn’t contributing to climate change.
Little has been heard since from Musk regarding bitcoin, other than Tesla dumping 75% of its bitcoin stack mid-2022, not far from the epic bottom of the crypto winter.
Musk, in fact, has seemingly gone out of his way not to get drawn into bitcoin discussions, waving away Cathie Wood during an online chat more than a year ago when she tried to bring up the subject, and keeping his distance from the Trump administration’s plans regarding the crypto.
Interest renewed?
That may have changed today though. In the pre-dawn U.S. hours, Musk took the time to respond to a Zerohedge X post trying to explain gold, silver and bitcoin at or near record highs.
“Money is not the problem: AI is the new global arms race, and capex will eventually be funded by governments (US and China),” said ZH. “If you want to know why gold/silver/bitcoin is soaring, it’s the ‘debasement’ to fund the AI arms race … But you can’t print energy,” ZH concluded.
“True,” replied Musk. “That is why Bitcoin is based on energy: you can issue fake fiat currency, and every government in history has done so, but it is impossible to fake energy.”
Whether this means Musk’s full engagement with Bitcoin again remains to seen, but the mercurial business leader appears to be paying attention to the “debasement trade.”
