After the Bitcoin price had already recorded a steady uptrend to as high as USD 34,400 yesterday, a setback $32,000 followed in the early European morning hours today. What followed could go down in the Bitcoin history books. The BTC price exploded by $6,000 and rose to as high as USD 38,074 on Coinbase.
Behind the pump, however, was by no means the infamous r/WallStreetBets group, but the richest man in the world, Elon Musk. The Tesla and SpaceX founder changed his Twitter bio to “#Bitcoin.” Unsurprisingly, this did not go unnoticed by the crypto community for long. Around 8:30 a.m. (UTC), the pump started and Crypto Twitter celebrated the day as the beginning of a new era.
Even though it was not 100% clear if Elon Musk bought Bitcoin, the crypto community suspected just that. As Charles Edwards, founder of Capriole Investments, tweeted, the long-standing rumor seems to have come true.
Danny Scott, CEO of Bitcoin exchange Coin Corner, wrote, “The richest man in the world….one of us?”. In another tweet, Scott interpreted Musk’s latest tweet, in which the billionaire cryptically wrote “In retrospect, it was inevitable.” According to Scott, it is clear that Musk is referring to Bitcoin.
The Bitcoin rumor around Elon Musk could come true
It’s worth noting that Musk made a splash in the Bitcoin community as early as last December. On Dec. 20, Musk had a conversation with MicroStrategy’s Michael Saylor via Twitter that began by Saylor provocatively asking Musk to invest in Bitcoin as a favor to his shareholders. Saylor tweeted:
If you want to do your shareholders a $100 billion favor, convert the $TSLA balance sheet from USD to #BTC. Other firms on the S&P 500 would follow your lead & in time it would grow to become a $1 trillion favor.
In addition, Saylor offered to share “his playbook” with the Tesla CEO, “from one rocket scientist to another,” and stated that he had purchased $1.3 billion in Bitcoin this year. Subsequently, Musk expressed his supposed interest and responded:
Are such large transactions even possible?
On the same day, Musk also wrote that Bitcoin is his “safe word.”