Early this morning, Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, as well as the richest person in the world, announced his Twitter profile to read ‘#bitcoin’ and tweet a cryptic message that many in the Bitcoin space have interpreted as advocating for the technology or as acknowledging that its tacit endorsement would likely happen.
Within minutes of the tweet popping up, the price of bitcoin climbed sharply. It rose from about $ 32,000 at the time of the tweet to about $ 37,500 just an hour later, a 14 percent increase, per TradingView. The BTC price finally reached a 14-day high of $ 38,300 on the day. According to data collector Coinalyze, this price gain caused more than $ 446 million in short-term liquidations in various cryptocurrency exchanges.
In remembrance of the moment, the bitcoin mining pool embedded F2Pool Musk’s message in block 668,197.
While it is not possible to draw a direct line between Musk’s tweet and the rise in bitcoin’s price, it is clear that it has generated great interest. According to Google Trends, the search for the word ‘bitcoin’ more than doubled within two hours of the message.
Some have also speculated that Musk himself made a significant investment in bitcoin. Last month, Musk publicly asked Michael Saylor – the CEO of MicroStrategy who diverted millions of dollars’ worth of treasury assets in bitcoin – on the feasibility of large bitcoin transactions.
