Many of us regard Elon Musk as one of the most influential innovators of our generation. Musk is the brains behind Paypal, SpaceX, Neuralink, the Boring Company, Tesla and more. In the course of his innovations, he has racked up quite a fortune. According to Forbes, he is the world’s 54th richest person, worth $23 billion. But did you know you might be richer than him?
Earlier today, Musk replied to a tweet by CoinDesk about his opinion of cryptos.
That said, I still only own 0.25 BTC, which a friend sent me several years ago. Don’t have any crypto holdings.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 21, 2019
So, there you have it. If you own more than 0.25 bitcoins, you are richer than the great Elon Musk. He may be $23 billion richer, but who cares? What matters is crypto, right?
Musk has been a crypto proponent for a long time, openly expressing his belief that cryptos will overhaul the traditional financial system. He reiterated his belief recently, stating that cryptos offer a better alternative to the conventional fiat currencies.
Musk was speaking in a podcast with Tasha Keeney and Cathie Wood, executives at Ark Invest, an investment firm based in New York. Musk was asked if he agreed with Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s view that there will be one digital currency to rule them all.
In his response, he stated that he believes paper money was going away. Cryptos bypass currency controls, giving the users power over the currency they use. “Crypto is a much better way of transferring money than pieces of paper,” he stated.
Tesla into Crypto? Not Anytime Soon
However, don’t be too quick to think that this means Tesla is considering venturing into crypto. While Musk is pro-crypto, he believes that Tesla and crypto are currently on opposite sides of the energy spectrum.
He stated:
But I’m not sure it would be a good use of Tesla’s resources to get involved in crypto. We’re really trying to accelerate the advancement of sustainable energy, and I think actually one of the downsides of crypto is that, computationally, it’s quite energy intensive. There had to be some kind of constraints on the creation of crypto, but it’s very energy intensive to create the incremental bitcoin at this point.
And indeed, energy requirement has continued to be cryptos’ Achilles heel. The mining process requires intense computing power and consequently, it uses a lot of energy. This has been one of the key reasons some miners have shut down operations in the bear market.
In the past, some have suspected that Musk is the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto. In fact, some crooks have used this to defraud people on social media with fake promotions. Of course, Musk has come out to categorically deny this.
And while he may not be Satoshi Nakamoto – I say may not be because we still don’t know for sure he isn’t – Musk believes that the Bitcoin creator deserves a Nobel award. He tweeted:
Whoever owns the early BTC deserves a Nobel prize in delayed gratification
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 21, 2019