Meme-lord and world’s richest human Elon Musk just tossed blood-sopped, raw meat into a retail investor feeding frenzy on Friday morning.
Amid a speculative run-up of so-called meme-stocks, such as GameStop, the chief executive of both Tesla and SpaceX tweaked his Twitter “bio” to read, simply, “#bitcoin.” Almost immediately, the cryptocurrency’s price surged nearly 20% to more than $38,500 per Bitcoin.
This is not the first time Musk has tweeted about Bitcoin. The electric car entrepreneur, who has nearly 4.4 million followers on Twitter as of Friday, posted a few provocative comments about the cryptocurrency in Dec., including that “Bitcoin is almost as bs as fiat money.”
Musk has tweeted about other cryptocurrencies too. On the same December day, Musk tweeted, “One word: Doge,” an apparent reference to Dogecoin, a hyper-inflationary joke cryptocurrency. Echoing today’s events, he soon after changed his Twitter bio, proclaiming himself to be the “Former CEO of Dogecoin,” rehashing a 2019 joke job appointment and apparently prompting the cryptocurrency’s price to spike 20%.
Bitcoin entered its biggest-ever bull-run last year. People began buying the cryptocurrency as a digital alternative to gold, a hedge against the possible inflationary effects of COVID-combatting government stimulus programs. (Unlike the balance sheets of central banks, like the Federal Reserve, which can expand to governments’ hearts content, Bitcoin’s supply is limited on a fixed and steadily diminishing issuance schedule that’s designed to boost its viability as a store of value.)