Elon Musk discussed his attitude towards Bitcoin (BTC) in a Jan. 20 podcast, after posting a series of mysterious tweets about it, along with SpaceX and Tesla. He said he has no strong opinion on the cryptocurrency but highlighted its use in illicit activities.
The billionaire has recently been in the public eye due to his series of brief and enigmatic tweets about cryptocurrency. On January 10, he tweeted that “Bitcoin is not my password”.
Back in April 2019, an equally enigmatic tweet was posted which stated “Cryptocurrency is my safe word.”
Despite being seen as jokes, Musk’s past is strongly connected to the financial technology sector, especially considering his tweets promising to make Tesla a private company for $420.
Elon Musk established X.com in 1999, which eventually evolved into PayPal after a series of mergers. He talked about the company during the podcast and said:
“If PayPal had executed the plan that I wanted to execute on, I think it would probably be the most valuable company in the world.”
The interviewers inquired as to Musk’s opinion on Bitcoin and other digital currencies, due to their resemblance to X.com. Musk responded that he’s “neither here nor there on Bitcoin.”
He described Satoshi’s white paper as “pretty clever,” yet noted that his opinion of cryptocurrencies tends to anger the crypto community. He went on to say:
“There are transactions that are not within the bounds of the law — there are obviously many laws in different countries — and normally cash is used for these transactions. But in order for illegal transactions to occur, the cash must also be used for legal transactions. You need an illegal-to-legal bridge. That’s where crypto comes in.”
Musk commented that cash is becoming less and less practical, but any alternative would have to be able to be used for both legitimate and illegitimate activities, as “it doesn’t count otherwise.”
Musk may not be a full believer in cryptocurrencies, however he is aware of the purpose they serve:
“You must have a legal to illegal bridge. So where I see crypto is effectively as a replacement for cash. I do not see crypto being the primary database [for transactions].”
Despite the fact that crypto has been used for illegal activities, Musk asserted he is not being “judgmental” about it. In his opinion, governments have overstepped their bounds in some areas:
“I think there’s a lot of things that are illegal that shouldn’t be illegal. I think that sometimes governments just have too many laws about the missions that they should have, and shouldn’t have so many things that are illegal.”
Musk has not expressed a full-on endorsement of cryptocurrencies, but he also hasn’t been completely opposed to them. In another part of the conversation, he remarked that banks are facing difficulty as rivals such as Stripe gain more traction.
