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[이데일리 김보겸 기자] Tesla’s $1.5 billion bitcoin investment may not have been surprising to Elon Musk’s Twitter followers. If you have seen your steps as a Bitcoin supporter.
On the 9th (local time), Reuters reported, “After Musk tweeted about virtual assets such as Bitcoin over the past few months, Tesla announced (Bitcoin) investment.” After fueling the bitcoin craze, it added bitcoin as an official asset to the asset portfolio. In a day after Tesla’s announcement, Bitcoin rose more than 20%, surpassing the 50 million won mark (about $47 million) for the first time.
Musk has consistently shown interest in Bitcoin. British writer Joanne Rowling, who wrote’Harry Potter’ in May last year, tweeted, “I’m not sure what bitcoin is. Please explain.” Musk appeared. He replied, “The status of a virtual asset such as bitcoin is becoming more solid as central banks in each country are issuing money on a large scale.” However, Musk said at the time that it only held 0.25 bitcoins. This is because I hate using virtual assets for crime.
Recently, Musk is focusing on commercializing virtual assets. In December of last year, Twitter publicly discussed the issue of converting Tesla’s cash to Bitcoin. Michael Sailor, CEO of MicroStrategy, recommended buying Bitcoin at the time. He is a leading Bitcoin advocate. Last year, he converted many of his MicroStrategy cash assets into 71,000 bitcoins. Its current value is 3 billion dollars.
Musk asked Sailor, “Is it possible to do large transactions with Bitcoin?” Sailor’s answer was “yes.” MicroStrategy’s share price also increased by 146% this year thanks to the bitcoin rally.
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Since then, Musk has mentioned virtual assets several times on Twitter. Last month, he wrote’Bitcoin’ in his introduction section, and recently he posted an article saying, “Who let the Doge out.” Dogecoin is a virtual asset created in 2013 by two software developers as a joke. Earlier this month, Musk said at Clubhouse, a voice-based chat app, that “Bitcoin is a good thing,” and “I think it is on the verge of being widely accepted by the established financial sector.”
With the interest of institutional investors, the bitcoin price has jumped more than 58% this year alone. It has soared from $17,500 each in 2017, when the first bitcoin craze broke out, to $46481 today. Tesla announced on the 8th (local time) that it could purchase more digital assets to diversify its assets and maximize the profits of its cash holdings, and that some could invest in alternative assets such as gold.