Tweets from Elon Musk send Bitcoin into a death spiral

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It’s really interesting to see how short tweets from thought leaders in the crypto space can upend the market, like when Tesla CEO Elon Musk seemingly sent Bitcoin plummeting to 35-percent of its record high. The price rebounded slightly when the billionaire clarified that Tesla had no plans to sell its stake in Bitcoin.

To really understand just how fickle the market is, just one word, “Indeed” as a reply was enough to sink the price even lower, which had been sliding since last week after another Musk tweet that said Tesla won’t be accepting Bitcoin as a payment method. That earlier tweet also talked about Bitcoin’s “insane” energy use.

That forced the Tesla CEO to somewhat retract the earlier implied meaning, saying that Tesla has not sold off any of its Bitcoin holdings.

Will the company sell off them in the future? Who knows, but this exchange does show the issues around speculative assets that aren’t controlled by any central monetary entity. Being able to destroy equity with simple statements being taken as fact is why we have rules and regulations in the financial market in the first place.

Bitcoin is still down around 10 percent from its all-time high, but could quite as easily climb over that peak as it could devalue.

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Joe Rice-Jones

Maker, meme-r, and unabashed geek with nearly half a decade of blogging experience at KnowTechie, SlashGear and XDA Developers. If it runs on electricity (or even if it doesn't), Joe probably has one around his office somewhere, with particular focus in gadgetry and handheld gaming. Shoot him an email at joe@knowtechie.com.