Led by Elon Musk, Tesla bought $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin in early 2021 and announced plans to accept BTC as payment for its products.
A few months later, Musk – expressing concern about the massive amounts of energy needed to secure the Bitcoin network – said Tesla would no longer accept bitcoin as payment until he was satisfied that bitcoin does not contribute to climate change.
Since then, Musk has heard little about bitcoin, other than Tesla giving up 75% of its bitcoin stack in mid-2022, not far from the epic crypto winter low.
Musk, in fact, has apparently gone out of his way to not get drawn into discussions about Bitcoin, gesturing to Cathie Wood during an online chat over a year ago when she tried to broach the subject, and keeping his distance from the Trump administration’s plans for crypto.
A renewed interest?
But that may have changed today. Before dawn in the United States, Musk took the time to respond to a Zerohedge X article attempting to explain that gold, silver and bitcoin were at or near record highs.
“Money is not the problem: AI is the new global arms race, and investments will ultimately be financed by governments (US and China),” ZH said. “If you want to know why gold/silver/bitcoin is skyrocketing, it’s ‘devaluation’ to fund the AI arms race… But you can’t print energy,” ZH concluded.
“That’s right,” Musk replied. “That’s why Bitcoin is based on energy: you can issue fake fiat currencies, and every government in history has done that, but it’s impossible to simulate energy.”
Whether this will mean Musk’s full commitment to Bitcoin again remains to be seen, but the mercurial business leader appears to be paying attention to “depreciation trading.”
