MicroStrategy / YouTube / Mario Tama / Getty Images
- Tesla’s bitcoin bet may have been influenced by the Twitter exchange of Elon Musk and Michael Saylor.
- MicroStrategy’s CEO told Time magazine that Tesla’s decision was a tipping point for bitcoin.
- Saylor said it is not “appropriate business decorum” to publicly discuss conversations with another CEO.
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Elon Musk’s dialogue on Twitter with the CEO of MicroStrategy influenced Tesla’s decision to invest $ 1.5 billion in bitcoin, said Michael Saylor in a recent interview with Time magazine.
At the end of last year, Musk had tweeted an obscene meme of a monk praying with his eyes closed, while a woman in the background acts as a metaphor for bitcoin in an attempt to tempt him.
Saylor answered to Musk’s post, saying he should do Tesla’s shareholders a “$ 100 billion favor” by converting the company’s balance sheet from dollars to bitcoin. “Other companies on the S&P 500 would follow its lead and, over time, increase to become a $ 1 trillion favor,” he wrote.
Musk responded with a question about the possibility of such large transactions, to which Saylor said “yes” and that he was willing to share his manual with the Tesla boss.
@ elonmusk / Twitter
A little over a month after their casual conversation, Tesla revealed its biggest bitcoin endorsement to date and announced that it would not only invest $ 1.5 billion in the most popular cryptocurrency in the world, but would also start accepting crypto payments for your products. The automaker used the Coinbase crypto exchange to make its bitcoin purchase, according to The Block.
Calling Tesla’s move a “tipping point”, Saylor said the narrative around the belief in bitcoin quickly changed from skepticism to growing acceptance. He further said it was not “appropriate business decorum” to comment on conversations with a CEO of another public company, but accepted that their Twitter exchange had an impact on Tesla’s decision.
Saylor refuted the idea that bitcoin is an example of irrational investor exuberance, which involves enthusiasm over news of price increases. “If you are looking for an example of real speculation, it would be people speculating whether they can squeeze others out in a short squeeze and small stock, like GameStop,” he said. “Bitcoin is not speculation, okay? Bitcoin is a unique new technology, it’s like Facebook for money or Google for money. And it has grown from nothing to a trillion dollars in monetary value in 12 years.”
Bitcoin traded steady at $ 57,380 at the start of the European trading session on Monday, but has risen by around 95% year-to-date and more than 885% in the last 12 months.
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Marc Lichtenfeld, chief revenue strategist at The Oxford Group, said it is shocking that CEOs of publicly traded companies are buying billions of dollars worth of shareholder equity. “If the price of bitcoin falls, shareholders will suffer significantly,” he said. “And I suspect that executives and directors will be taken to court.”