Did Elon Musk Just Suggest Tesla Is About to Dump Its BTC?
3 min read
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk may have implied on Twitter today that Tesla has sold, or plans to sell, its BTC.
When Twitter user @Cryptowhale tweeted the hypothetical scenario that “Bitcoiners are going to slap themselves next quarter when they find out Tesla dumped the rest of their #BTC holdings,” Musk replied with a single word: “Indeed.”
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 16, 2021
Although it is unclear what Musk is agreeing with, or if he’s even agreeing at all, the insinuation that Tesla could dump the 43,200 BTC it bought in February this year for $1.5 billion helped depress the price of BTC by almost $5,000 dollars, down to $44,700.
Musk, who has spent much of the year supporting BTC, started to trash the coin earlier this week, finally wisening up to the environmental damage caused by fossil-fuel-powered BTC mining operations.
The rest of today’s damage was done when Musk widened his criticism against BTC, lobbing invectives against crypto Twitter’s brightest and best BTC maximalists, and tearing apart their claim that proof-of-work mining helps decentralize the network.
“Hey cryptocurrency “experts”, ever heard of PayPal? It’s possible … maybe … that I know than you realize about how money works, [sic]” tweeted Musk, who helped found the payments giant.
Hey cryptocurrency “experts”, ever heard of PayPal? It’s possible … maybe … that I know than you realize about how money works.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 16, 2021
Musk took aim at crypto podcaster Peter McCormack, who described Musk’s recent criticism of the environmental impact of BTC as “poorly informed.”
McCormack had explained at length why he believes Musk is wrong—mirroring the innumerable Twitter threads that do the same. Musk retorted: “Obnoxious threads like this make me want to go all in on Doge.”
Musk also trained his sights at Michael Saylor, the BTC ultra-bull, who has used the treasury of his company, US cloud computing firm MicroStrategy, to spend billions of dollars on BTC.
He should wear outfit for Halloween, but with “BTC” tattooed high on thighs
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 16, 2021
Musk called him “Saylor Moon,” and suggested he dress up like the anime character Sailor Moon “with ‘BTC’ tattooed high on thighs.” Saylor took the jibe on the chin before redirecting Musk to his educational site for BTC: hope.com.
Since both #Tesla & #BTC fans believe technology can make the world a better place, why don’t we focus on going to the moon together?
— Michael Saylor (@michael_saylor) May 16, 2021
Since both 
Over 100 million people think BTC represents Musk ripped through the claim that BTC’s proof-of-work consensus mechanism helps it stay decentralized.
He tweeted: “BTC is actually highly centralized, with supermajority controlled by handful of big mining (aka hashing) companies. A single coal mine in Xinjiang flooded, almost killing miners, and BTC hash rate dropped 35%. Sound “decentralized” to you?”
What or whom will Musk attack next? Read it here first.
