A German prankster claims he was behind a mysterious post on Reddit last month that seemed to anticipate Tesla’s blockbuster bitcoin purchase this week – and that he was taking LSD when he did that, the Post found out.
Tesla surprised Wall Street on Monday when it revealed that it had acquired $ 1.5 billion in bitcoin to “further diversify and maximize returns” on its balance sheet. Tesla said it also plans to start accepting cryptocurrency as a payment option for its electric cars.
Not long after the surprise announcement, attention turned to a January 2 post by a Reddit user named “TSLAinsider” who claimed to have a hot tip about Tesla’s entry into the cryptocurrency market.
“You heard it here first – our company just bought 800 million Bitcoins,” said the five-week post. The user, claiming he was “a software developer working in R&D at Tesla in California”, allegedly added that the company led by Elon Musk bought 24,701 bitcoin at an average price of $ 33,142 “in the past 72 hours”.
The post seemed like such a prescient forecast of Tesla’s bitcoin investment that financial media, including Reuters and Bloomberg, published it this week.
But in an interview with The Post, Hendrik, the 24-year-old political science student behind the TSLAinsider account, said he took the job while on high with LSD during the holiday season.
“If you want to know the truth: I am a young German and I was taking acid while writing this post last month,” the user told The Post by email on Tuesday. “I had the statement that Elon was going to buy Bitcoin, so I created this trollpost. And now all the newspapers around the world are writing about it, it’s kind of funny and scary to be honest. “
Hendrik, who asked to be identified only by his first name, said he had the intuition that Tesla would invest in Bitcoin after seeing a Twitter exchange in December between Musk and MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor, whose intelligence firm business bought more than $ 1 billion of digital currency last year.
“Me and my girlfriend took acid and I saw the conversation between Michael Saylor and Elon Musk on Twitter and I was like, yes, why shouldn’t he buy bitcoin?” Hendrik told The Post in an interview on Tuesday with Zoom Germany. “He’s crazy and has a lot of money, so why not?”
Hendrik provided The Post with a screenshot showing himself connected to TSLAinsider’s Reddit account, which triumphantly posted “I TOLD YOU” after Tesla’s announcement on Monday.
Her initial post – which initially got no comments from other users – was dubious enough that moderators on the Reddit forum dedicated to Tesla’s actions would remove it, according to Hendrik.
It also did not align with Tesla’s regulatory process on Monday, which said the company bought Bitcoin after changing its investment policy in January. 72-hour purchases would have to start during the last days of December if the TSLAinsider schedule was accurate.
Hendrik said he is not active on Reddit, but decided to play a trick on the site because “everyone goes to Reddit to troll people”. He is, however, an active Bitcoin investor and has been since his teens, he says.
“I think it’s part of the technology of the future,” said Hendrik, praising Musk for putting Tesla in the Bitcoin game.
“He opened the door for other companies to do the same, since they all want to be like Elon,” he added.
Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.