Yet again, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency prices fell on Friday, apparently in reaction to Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s latest tweet.
Musk shared a meme featuring a breakup on Twitter on Thursday evening. The meme showed an unhappy couple, with the woman saying, “I know I said it would be over between us if you quoted another Linkin Park song but I’ve found someone else.” The man responds, “So in the end it didn’t even matter?” Musk added the cryptic caption, “#Bitcoin,” alongside the heart-breaking emoji.
Two hours later, Musk added further confusion by posting an image of a couple in a long-distance relationship, communicating by video call while both are lying in bed. The woman is saying, “I miss you.” When the man appears to be tearing up, she asks, “Why are you crying?” The man, who is actually watching market value graphs which appear to be in free-fall, says, “Cuz I miss you too.”
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 4, 2021
As CNET reported, “Following the tweet, Bitcoin fell more than 4.5% to around $36,823 as of 9 a.m. PT on Friday. Ethereum, Dogecoin and other cryptocurrencies were also down.” Toward the end of Friday, the value of Bitcoin declined even further to $37,772. The Wall Street Journal added, “Ether dropped 4.2% from its 5 p.m. Thursday level to $2,702.23. Dogecoin, another favorite of Mr. Musk’s, declined 4.7% to about 38 cents.”
“The two posts elicited thousands of comments, including images of a shuddering man, as well as requests to ‘leave us alone’ and ‘stop manipulating.’ They also prompted some Twitter users to block Mr. Musk, but that hasn’t made a dent in his more than 55 million followers,” added The Wall Street Journal.
After the market dip, Musk was reportedly slammed at the Bitcoin 2021 conference, according to Fox Business.
“Max Keiser, host of the ‘Keiser Report,’ began his fireside chat by repeating, ‘F*** Elon!’ several times,” reported Fox Business, while Michael Saylor, “co-founder of the business intelligence company MicroStrategy and a staunch Bitcoin defender,” rejected Musk’s earlier concern regarding the environmental impact of Bitcoin.
“Bitcoin is the most efficient use of energy that the human race has yet come up with,” said Saylor. “I think that Bitcoin is an extraordinarily disruptive, beneficial technology to the entire energy industry, and as I studied it, it became clear to me that it’s the highest-value use of intermittent energy.”
“It’s the highest-value use of renewable energy. It’s the highest-value use of wasted or stranded energy. And it’s just the highest-value use of energy period,” he added.
On May 12, Musk expressed concern about the “rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal, which has the worst emissions of any fuel.”
“Cryptocurrency is a good idea on many levels and we believe it has a promising future, but this cannot come at great cost to the environment,” Musk added, as reported by The Daily Wire.