Musk’s tweets move the whole crypto market. He thinks it’s all a laugh—but the joke isn’t very funny anymore.
What a weird week it was in cryptoland. But then again, isn’t every week?
Last Saturday, Elon Musk gave us a textbook example of “buy the rumor, sell the news.” He helped send Dogecoin, his favorite meme token to pump on Twitter, on a rocket ride in the days leading up to his “Saturday Night Live” hosting debut—until the ride abruptly ended minutes before SNL started. By the time Musk’s mother Maye Musk name-dropped DOGE in the opening monologue, the coin was sinking fast—it fell from 62 cents to below 50 cents over the course of the next hour. Later in the show, Musk, playing the character of financial expert “Lloyd Ostertag,” admitted to Michael Che that Dogecoin is a “hustle”—not a great look, even in a comedy sketch.
As the week began, Musk was the biggest story in crypto, as critics once again asked: Were his DOGE-pumping tweets irresponsible? What does Musk owe to all the Tesla worshipers who bought Dogecoin because of his tweets? (The tweets are not illegal, though they are arguably unethical; in late February, in response to reports that the SEC was investigating his Dogecoin tweets, Musk said, “I hope they do! It would be awesome.”)
On Wednesday evening, the narrative changed again when Musk tweeted a bombshell: Tesla, just three months after buying $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin, will ditch the cryptocurrency due to environmental concerns.
Huh? As Wedbush analyst Dan Ives wrote, “The nature of Bitcoin mining has not changed in the last three months.” Ives called Musk’s Bitcoin reversal “surprising and confusing.” Decrypt’s Scott Chipolina wrote that Musk “has dealt a potentially fatal blow to his image as one of Bitcoin’s biggest advocates.” Musk’s tweet sent Bitcoin down 15%, and other major coins took a hit as well.
