This morning, Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, as well as the richest person in the world, changed his Twitter profile reading “#bitcoin” and tweeting an enigmatic message that many in the Bitcoin space interpreted as a defense of technology or recognition that their tacit endorsement was about to happen.
Within minutes of the tweet appearing, the price of bitcoin has gone up dramatically. It went from about $ 32,000 at the time of the tweet to about $ 37,500 just an hour later, an increase of 14 percent, by TradingView. The price of BTC finally hit its highest high of $ 38,300 in 14 days. That price gain has caused more than $ 446 million in short settlements across multiple cryptocurrency exchanges, according to data aggregator Coinalyze.
Celebrating the moment, the F2Pool bitcoin mining pool incorporated Musk’s message into block 668,197.
While it is not possible to draw a direct line between Musk’s tweet and the increase in the price of bitcoin, it is clear that this generated great interest. According to Google Trends, searches for the word “bitcoin” more than doubled in two hours after the message.
Some also speculated that the price was changed by Musk himself, who made a significant investment in bitcoin. Last month, Musk publicly asked Michael Saylor – the CEO of MicroStrategy who diverted millions of dollars in treasury assets to bitcoin – on the feasibility of making large transactions with bitcoin.
