Bitcoin Forum

Musk was involved with paypal, and has access to a lot of high tech and high tech advisors.

Why then was he so late to support BTC?

Well, he said this weekend on a meeting at new media outlet Clubhouse that he wished he bought in 8 years ago.

If that helps  :)

Well he probably was busy playing with rockets and cars, but i guess he finally got it. Next step in proving support, is accepting bitcoin and paying wages in bitcoin. Time will tell how genuine he is.

In the grand scheme of things, he's not actually that late.  Bitcoin still isn't exactly mainstream yet.  History will still record that he was "in" before some of the other big-name businessmen.  And still before the vast majority of the general masses.  

Year 2000 was big for Elon Musk. By that time only his online banking company got merged with confinity and started PayPal. In this manner even before the existence of bitcoin he is on the track of innovation relative to banking. Later on his interest has got moved towards aerospace and related development. That seems the reason why Elon Musk isn't early to be the part of Bitcoin. Even now it isn't late, without bitcoin he's the richest, when he starts acquiring Bitcoin to his list what'll be his position ???

For a long time, many of my friends have tried to persuade me to participate in the Bitcoin business. "Musk said that he had eaten a piece of "bitcoin cake" given to him by a friend in 2013. He "obviously... eight years ago should have bought at least some bitcoins-really late."

Do you remember some months ago Musk said he had a relatively small amount of Bitcoin and not going to invest more? What did make him change his mind and become a Bitcoin supporter?

The fact that Musk was involved with a company like Paypal is kinda disturbing to me. ;D
Actually Musk doesn't need Bitcoin.He has his own Bitcoin-Tesla stocks. ;D The Tesla stocks prices increased 11 times in 3 years.This is a pretty impressive price bubble,that can be compared only to the BTC price bubble.
I guess that he doesn't want to own another financial asset,that is growing rapidly and creates a price bubble.

For him, the cryptocurrency just doesn't matter much. Elon Musk does not seek to profit from it. He is engaged in real advanced technologies and this, in addition to moral satisfaction, sometimes brings him several billion dollars in profit a day. Even a few million dollars in cryptocurrency profits no longer matter to him. Man cannot cover everything at the same time.

it is easy to say today that you are sorry not being here 8 years ago :) , I think that everyone is sharing the same feeling with him, if not present here 8 years ago :)
nevertheless, I do think that Elon joining the party is a good thing for community and that he is not going to pump and dump it, like with some altcoins, where he does not involve himself, but just tweeting about it is making a lot of fuss on the market

Bitcoin is here to stay, and Elon recognized that, he does not need 10x on his portfolio, but would not like to go down with USD as well, so embrace BTC is his best option

That is one way to put it, and not to mention that he is also busy with Neuralink, Starlink, The Boring Company, Hyperloop and OpenAI, so my guess is that he doesn't have that much free time to consider the wonders of bitcoin at that time. It doesn't really matter though, everyone will eventually support this bitcoin, the ones that are afraid are the people that are going to be hit by the hypetrain that is bitcoin.

Well it's obvious he was busy with other life endeavours and trying to achieve whatever he wants in life but being a man of innovation or a man who likes innovative ideas, he has later come to terms with Bitcoin and what it offers. The funny things is, this is the same Bitcoin that a lot people won't fail to ridicule or say bad things towards it, but here is someone who understands the essence of a good technology supporting it, in my own opinion, it doesn't really matter how long it took but what matters is coming to terms and agreeing with it. I believe gradually, even those who do not see anything good in Bitcoin will also come to agree with it, understand it and support the way they can.

Personally I wonder if he talks about it now to help Tesla indirectly. Basically wooing a certain crowd, that is also likely to be part of "wallstreetbets", putting himself and Tesla in the camp of the good guys. After all plenty in Wall Street think Tesla is overvalued, and it is (or has been in the past, I'm not following that too closely) heavily shorted, then retail investors helped in short squeezing the shorters.

As for being late, it doesn't really matter, he's one of the richest people on the planet, he can sell some Tesla stock and buy thousands of BTC, then he's set for life whatever happens.

He wasn't late. He just went public late, and in fact, still hasn't really said much about it. He probably has a lot of secret stashes and has wisely avoided revealing himself as a crypto whale.

He definitely has a few billion dogecoin I would say:P

He did it in time, you can be sure of that.

You got it backwards. He and another guy made paypal in a garage, this was an app (program) for palm (pda) devices (precursor to smartphones), ie: "PAY with your PALm" (basically using email and credit card). They were bought, (that's how he made his initial fortune) and from that acquisition comes the company you know today, he didn't stay there.

At this point most people would just sit in their fortune and live of it for the rest of their lives. This guy had another idea, the rest is history. But yeah, he might have seen Bitcoin from the sidelines, but truly, with the whole bunch of things he was doing he probably didn't give it any serious attention. But i guess its never late than never, he might have finally found out, perhaps because of those annoying scammers impersonating him? Who knows...

Elon has quite a few things going on in his life, and if you understand bitcoin/cryptocurrencies then you know that there is a lot to learn.  I think I studied bitcoin for at least a year before I ever bought.  Now he's far more intelligent than the average bear, but still.

I also think it's funny some people think he's Satoshi..no way he had the time to do all that. Not a chance in my mind.

Probably just because he was previously skeptical, and something just clicked. It’s most probably just mere coincidence, but his support of BTC came out after the Robinhood-GME fiasco. I wouldn’t be surprised if that ended up being the final straw for Elon to recognize the importance of a free market.

He was the co-founder of PayPal, a payments solution technology that goes directly against what bitcoin offers. It will obviously take him some time to churn the reality that bitcoin can co-exist with what we have right now in terms of payments and investments. Also, the dude is practically busy in most of his companies, especially his biggest cash cow right now, Tesla and SpaceX. Given the incredibly high valuation of Tesla stocks, Mr. Musk should make sure that those who bought shares would get their money's worth, and I believe that bitcoin is incredibly volatile at the time (even now) to cover for the money that Tesla is carrying should there be any issues and all.

Better late than never. How many of the top 10 most wealthy people has openly come in support of Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency? I think Elon Musk is the only one. A few, such as Warren Buffet on the other hand has shown open hostility towards BTC. It has something to do with the age as well. Those who are in 90 plus age group (such as Buffet) are having difficulty in accepting new technology. But those who are in the younger age bracket such as Musk and Zuckerberg are more open towards new innovations.

Well, at the early stage of crypto people thought it'll be a failed experiment. But, for Musk I belive he has been doing DUE DILIGENCE regarding the use of crypto and how it will evolve.

Secondly, leaving PayPal to working on other projects such as SpaceX, Tesla.. This is enough reason why his attention will not be in the crypto space.

I feel this might to some extent justify his lateness to the most exciting party...

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Though Tesla may be highly valuable than bitcoin in terms of market market Cap,  at the present time but I feel with the trend of btc the future market price of btc will be incomparable to that Tesla.

[moderator's note: consecutive posts merged]

I feel like he's been playing around with phrases about Bitcoin for years now, so I'm not sure what you mean by 'so late'. He's just a trickster to me, to be honest, because he can praise or in some other way sympathize with Bitcoin one day, but then say something bearish a couple of months later. If he's currently in the good mood about Bitcoin, it doesn't mean that he's a supporter and won't betray it in the future. Musk is a good inventor, but his position on cryptos seems fluid to me, so I wouldn't pay much attention to it.

Well, I guess he has tons of things to do before thinking about bitcoin or cryptocurrency even though in the deep of his heart, cryptocurrency always has good attention. What he is doing right now is quite amaze and this does emphatically affect the crypto market by giving people more strength and confidence.

And, the party is not yet over. There are still many years ahead for cryptocurrency to be developed and ameliorated. Once Musk has shown his support, this process seems to be altered even faster. Hope that we will soon see Elon Musk having a big talk show about high tech that includes cryptocurrency

I think most investors are like him. It's not so much whether he's a skeptic or not, he has advisors around him telling him the risks and potentials, and if anyone has an inch of financial brain power, they know it's wise to invest a little bit in Bitcoin. The tech is impossible to ignore. The decentralization of the future impossible to miss.

The thing is, Tesla and SpaceX aren't actually cash cows. They barely make money. And the stock being very valuable doesn't help much, the company still has only emitted a few shares and cashed in a few billions, immediately invested in new plants/etc.

They're not (yet) like something like Apple generating hundreds of billions of cash per year, it's more in the mere millions.

Everyone feels that they are late to the party because people who even knew about bitcoin in 2011 ignored to invest on it because they never know how far it can grow in the next 10 years. But its okay to enter now because we are still in the five digits, probably in the next 10 years we can expect 7 digit value per bitcoin.

The difference is not that large. Tesla market capitalization as of now is around $827 billion, compared to the Bitcoin market cap of $675 billion (the total cryptocurrency market cap stands at $1.086 trillion). However, if you check the ROI, then Tesla is performing better than Bitcoin. During the past 12 months, the Tesla stock went up by a massive 460%. The same figure for Bitcoin is 269%. But then, I feel that it is not right to compare an EV manufacturer with a cryptocurrency. Both of them have very good future potential, but apart from that there are few similarities.  

BTW, 12 months ago BTC had a higher market cap compared to Tesla ($183 billion vs $147 billion).

His Tesla is doing awesome and we have seen its worth is increasing at a good pace. Even we have witnessed the outstanding growth of BTC in recent months and still continuing. Big players involved when they can be benefited might be he has some bitcoins so he added Bitcoin in its Twitter bio after that we all know Btc rallied again. So I would say he is not late If he bought before writing Btc in its bio he must be in good profit by holding BTC. It's just my opinion.

Do you believe in everything that anyone had ever said? Elon Musk just again promotes cryptocurrencies. He has a lot of fans, more than forty four millions of subscribers in Twitter, his words really matters to all of them and he skillfully uses these “army” to “fire” cryptomarket.

Who knows the exact reason. It's best to ask Elon himself.

One thing is sure however. If Tesla bought $1.2B worth of Bitcoin, they are expecting a return from that investment. Big companies like that don't just 'speculate/gamble' on the market with $1.2B

Which means, Bitcoin price is going to grow. Grow a lot.

Late? Not at all! Bitcoin is still extremely young. Bitcoin is still not known or not understood by most of this world population.
And imho Bitcoin is still poorly regulated making it rather difficult for companies to join the party.
Keep in mind that we are here a rather small group. The world is way much bigger than this.


And I think that compared to Bitcoin, he entered "late" into cars or space industries, but most probably even there he is not late at all. And he's doing a good job.

I think he knows more than we do... It was most likely related to the issue of cryptocurrency regulation... And now his firms are officially allowed to buy bitcoin...
But I'm sure he personally has owned various cryptocurrencies for a long time now!

I don't think that there is someone here who knows the reason behind that thing but for sure he has his reason but actually, there is no late for the world of cryptocurrency maybe you just got late to earn more when the price of bitcoin is not that too high to buy but you can still explore bitcoin or crypto community as long as you want, you will never get late for the knowledge.

Well it's nice to see that the richest man on earth supports crypto but he is and will be an eccentric billionaire. Now he thinks that crypto is hot but who knows how he thinks about this in a few months.

Let's hope he will be into crypto for a long time and not that he dumps everything when he got bored.

My BTC DCA showing a great profit from kucoin platform, and i would hug Musk for buying BTC  (https://trade.kucoin.com/BTC-USDT)at the right timing

The funny thing about his actual business (Tesla and not others like SpaceX) is that it's actually not really doing as well as it should. He hasn't produced a lot of cars, in fact production has always had problems and not meeting the supply limits, and always behind on schedule. Yet the stocks keep on getting higher and higher. Big bubble:) Maybe he is putting all the profits in BTC and hoping what he makes from there can help expand.

I am sure that many people in cryptocurrency can be asking the same question. And I think only Elon Musk can be able to supply the right answer to that. However, he is known as a big supporter of cryptocurrency for a long time, it is just that he was not known to have accumulated a big number of coins, and it is only now that his Tesla company decided to join the Bitcoin party. Well, we should never be complaining considering that he made the move at the right time. Elon is such a big influence and now the most powerful man in the world of cryptocurrency as anything he can say will have waves in the market.

I wonder this too. I am pretty sure he knew about bitcoin even in 2011-2012. Somebody must have told him. All these years he ignored it and now suddenly he became a believer and not even that, ccording to the news, he bought his stash when the price was abve $30k. He could have bought it from $10k or even $1k.

I wonder what changed his mind.

I only think that he was not really minding Bitcoin because he was focused on his current craft which was PayPal. He has great influence in the field of technology right now than before but that does not mean Elon Musk was not knowledgeable about Cryptocurrencies. He might have heard about it before it became publicly known and he just decided to let it go boom instead of promoting it and its just good that he is hyping it right now since his influence is bigger now than before.

Who knows, perhaps he felt it wasn't the right time for him or he was probably waiting to see how long btc can survive the hit coming from the government and non government organizations, or again he was triggered by the bold step of PayPal, i bet that PayPal moves awaken something in many of the giant companies and rich individuals out there, they were surprise to see a company like PayPal who has publicly condemned btc has suddenly switch over, that must kept them wondering, and being a business man Elon saw an opportunity that he didn't see years back and he decided to make a move.

Well, it wasn't just words this time. Musk(Tesla) has bought $1.5 Billion in Bitcoin recently(this partially explains his  pro-crypto tweets). Even if he used to be bearish regarding BTC sometimes in the past, I think it will never happen again. :)

Replying to OP, no, Musk isn't late to the party. The party is only starting to heat up.

Honestly, I had no idea knowing that it is impossible for him to not hear any news regards it. But I'm gonna take a guess, apparently, he only watched the whole thing, analyzing the market, and more then he realizes to enter the market as it now becoming a trend or either he is busy on making other stuff which we know Elon's been handling a lot of stuff like his cars and rockets. The thing is we don't exactly know what exactly the reasons are that is why I'm kinda having a doubt. Anyway, as OP said, I don't think he is too late to enter or support the market in fact, it is only the beginning.

That would be answered by him and what he decides to do and when to do it. The timing now too cannot be wrong or said to be late as because the rate at which he invested in is not what we have now there has been a lot of increase so even with him being late to the market he still has profit loading from the investment.

One thing for sure is that whenever certain coin he wants to increase the price would just tweet any coin name and then prices zoom in few minutes. So, in just a day or so his portfolio will rise by millions in profits if he buys in bulk qty just like what he did with btc. On other hand if he decides to sell the same then price will drop in a big way. But nevertheless, it’s not late to the party in bitcoin this is what I understood it.

timing, of course, he was waiting for the right timing. maybe if he entered 3 years ago, the bitcoin market would have been controlled by him. Because he came now, while yesterday the market was falling and now being pumped to the extreme during this pandemic, a new trend will be created by Elon Musk. legalization possible? new coins, real use case? we just wait.

It’s not just him though, but other ones who missed out buying BTC early. But it’s better late than never though. My cousin from the United States even regretted the time he ignored his friend telling him to buy Bitcoin while it’s early. He was never a believer back then, and now his friend is reaping the rewards for deciding to buy Bitcoin early.

It's possible that Musk confirmed the truth of bitcoin and has been quietly analyzing about bitcoin and when bitcoin first printed a new ath there elon arrived on Twitter and then reported some altcoins that are currently popular are doge.

Interesting question. It was really surprising for the society. But in my opinion, it is never too late to invest in Bitcoin or to do steps towards it. In addition to this Musk is a rich busy person and it seems to me that Bitcoin was not his priority for last years. Despite of the fact that he is successful and rich, he is a human like others with his dreams, plans, preferences, choices, mistakes or successful decisions and so on.  Sometimes people change their minds, change their directions and in case it works for personal and general purposes, so it is not late))

That took him time? If I were in his shoes, I would have bought when it was still looming the 20k price. I think the reason is that Elon is trying to make the board of some sort in his company Tesla to get on board with the idea of buying bitcoin, I mean Elon's hands are tied when it comes to that, he needs the approval of every stakeholder so there is no problem when things go south with his plan.

I think Elon Musk was late in supporting Bitcoin because at first he didn't expect Bitcoin to be of the value it is today. I have been familiar with Bitcoin
since 2015, but have not been interested in investing in Bitcoin. Because I also didn't  think Bitcoin would be as valuable as it is today. Moreover,
Elon Musk is a person who is busy with many activities, surely he will not be too focused on learning Bitcoin. There are several statements
by Elon Musk who admitted he regretted not investing in Bitcoin in the first place.

Since we are talking about Elon Musk and his support of BTC, as well of some other cryptos, can someone explain this cryptic message from him posted 3 hours ago?

https://i.imgur.com/lzMyEg9.png

I'm not a Lord of the Rings fan myself, so maybe that's why I can't get it. :)

EDIT: Never mind. I clicked on it and then saw the whole picture.

https://i.imgur.com/P6mke3v.png

So, now it's clear which coin Musk is really supporting. :)

My thoughts about Elon still haven't changed even after he declared that he is buying Bitcoin. He is still fucking around. The next level for him is going all-in with Doge probably. Shock after shock for the Tesla holders and everybody else.  ;D

Obviously, it would be because of the hectic schedule of the person. He has a lot on his plate for God's sake. He can't just go and ignore important business just because of something speculative. I'm pretty sure you get my point. Which is probably the reason why he only took notice of this industry or bitcoin to be precise, when it has already reached bigger numbers. In his work he needs to weigh everything real good before making decisions and risks. Give the guy some slack.

Maybe the reason for that is he aren't aware the existence of bitcoin before or he only have little knowledge on it that's why he came out late. Also he had so many businesses that needed to care off and this is the reason why musk came late on buying bitcoins.

But for sure before he enter the market he conduct a good study on it that's why he is so good in terms of creating some big news in this industry.

Maybe he was scared of John McAfee  ::)

On a more serious note, Elon's thing isn't just with Bitcoin. He has been shilling for Dogecoin too. Perhaps, he didn't want any distractions from his innovative electric autos until now. He knows the power of influence, and influence got from wealth. Elon Musk is the current richest being on planet earth. He knows whatever he says now will be taken seriously. That's why he's becoming outspoken now. He waited for his time and now is the right time to make his statement.

Also, I think, he is just like ordinary person like us, he never thought that bitcoin or crypto will be this big as today. So he never thought of investing in bitcoin in its early days. Remember that he said before, he only had 0.25 btc given by his friend. And now, it is worth something though it is just a dust of course when you compare it with his assets. And now, he is seeing the potential of crypto when it comes to future investments.

That is means, it's never too late to invest in bitcoin even its price is high already. You can buy bitcoin at any price conditions, you still have a chance to get profit. Many people especially those who just new to invest in bitcoin he wants bitcoin price to fall first so as they can buy at the lower price but it is rare to happen especially when bitcoin price in the bull run market.

I think bitcoin has a real value and this thing can attract many people to believe it. Yeah, there will be many people who will don't believe that bitcoin can stay until now and being interested by most people until now. When I was newbie, I often to read a lot of comment in this forum who said that bitcoin is the future technology and many people will be interested to it, and now it has happened.

He has a lot of other business so maybe bitcoin hasn't got his attention until now and if you are looking at the grandscheme of thing he's not actually that late, bitcoin is not mainstream at all, not everyone know what bitcoin is and the number of merchant that accept bitcoin as a payment method is not much. We don't know how much bitcoin will worth if it goes mainstream. he brings support and attention to crypto so i expect good things ahead.

Perhaps he just woke up. A lot of people should be waking up.  If the social networks and payment networks (e.g. Stripe) can stop the President of the United States from using them, no one is safe, let along a billionaire President.  The fascists and other authoritarians want to shut people without whom they disagree down and do not want to engage in debate.   The simple way is to stop those people from having a platform or being able to fund their speech.

As such, censorship resistant, distributed, p2p platforms such as bitcoin or twister are critical to anyone who cares about liberty.

Hopefully that is something Musk has realized now.

In my opinion, he must have known about Cryptocurrencies for a long time and he is just cautious as to how companies and big tech will respond to it. It gave him many years in studying, analyzing, and checking the market for any trends before he will be able to react to it. We all know that he is the ultimate tech guy, he loves his sciency stuff like his electric cars and his space technology. He thinks that now was the right time to enter the cryptospace and we all went nuts about it.

That's not applicable to everyone, can't compare me to Elon Musk who can play in the market while I am just an ant in the market, can't influence the flow. You can buy at any price conditions but take note that every step is a huge risk awaits, if you think that buying at any time is a good idea, a downfall might time then you'll be broke. Bitcoin can attract a lot of people especially when some known person supports it like Elon Musk but still risky to invest just because he invested and manipulated the price, if we had the gut then we are rich by now. It's normal that you're late in supporting but it's wrong to invest at any price condition or at anytime where you feel you want to.

Do you really think that bitcoin is not mainstream yet, not all stores are accepting bitcoin but as a speculative market the institutional investors are flooding their money and so is the reason the price is around $48,050 when i am posting this.

Elon Musk is a business tycoon but he is in the cryptocurrency market for a long time even though he has not taken it seriously and even claimed that he does hold bitcoin but not sure he remembers where he is holding them back in 2017.

Musk just wanna make sure he won't get tangled with laws and tax. He must have tons of BTC all hidden and probably even Monero as well. He had been in crypto longer than we know but rich people are always shady. If he wants to hide something he has to stay unrecognized by the radar. But now that he can't hide being the richest man on earth, he has to reveal himself but not his total assets. He'd likely just how the $1.5B worth of BTC he has to the government but there are likely more than that.

Idk, to me Musk isn't some crazy guy doing this or that randomly. After all, he wouldn't be the world's richest person if he were like this. Yes, he is supporting DOGE with his words, but I think it is more important that he is supporting BTC with his deeds . (Remember, Tesla has bought $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin recently).