Elon Musk defends Tesla’s $ 1.5 billion bitcoin bet as “adventurous enough” for an S&P 500 company – and says it’s less stupid than saving money | Currency news | Financial and business news

• Elon Musk defended Tesla’s bitcoin bet as “quite adventurous”, rather than also owning Dogecoin.
• Musk was responding to Binance’s CEO, Changpeng Zhao, who announced Tesla’s action in an interview with Bloomberg.
• Zhao said he was surprised that Musk was an advocate for Dogecoin, as he was raised as a joke.
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Elon Musk defended Tesla’s $ 1.5 billion bitcoin bet after the CEO of major cryptocurrency exchange Binance called on the billionaire’s support for the meme-based Dogecoin token.

“Having a little bit of Bitcoin, which is simply a less stupid form of liquidity than money, is an adventure enough for an S & P500 company,” said Musk tweeted in response to a Bloomberg Interview with Binance’s CEO, Changpeng Zhao.

Tesla made its biggest endorsement in bitcoin by announcing not only its significant investment, but also that it plans to adopt the digital asset as a form of payment for its products.

In the interview, Zhao said he was surprised that Musk was an advocate for Dogecoin, as he was created as a joke. Musk fired several tweets about the Shiba Inu-themed token, causing an increase in its price. Last week, he said he bought some for his 9-month-old son.

“I strongly believe that he is not really associated with Dogecoin in any way,” said Zhao of Musk, noting that Tesla’s bet was on bitcoin, not on the active “joke”. But Binance recently added Dogecoin futures based on consumer demand. That’s because it is gaining popularity for reasons that no one expected, Zhao said.

Zhao’s comments elicited a response from Musk, in which he explained the reason behind Tesla’s move.

“When the fiat currency has negative real interest, only a fool would not look elsewhere,” Musk tweeted. “Bitcoin is almost as cheap as fiat money. The keyword is” almost “.”

Other Wall Street names appear to be embracing bitcoin as well, raising the token’s price to a historic high above $ 52,000. As bitcoin reaches record levels, Zhao said that Binance is seeing more than 300,000 new user registrations daily. The exchange saw last notable levels during the bitcoin boom in 2017, but volumes are even higher now.

“There is a lot more activity now in this sector than there was three years ago,” said Zhao. “We are just at the beginning.”

Bitcoin’s recovery extended on Friday as it rose 2% to trade around $ 52,740 as of 9:40 am GMT.