Elon and the Absurdity of Bitcoin
Elon Musk is considered by fools to be among the smartest people alive. He will be discussed as though he has the intellect of Nikola Tesla, combined with the ability to create products of Thomas Edison. This towering intellect is a facade built on the willingness of others to continue to propagate the myth, and nothing makes that clearer than Elon’s relationship with Bitcoin.
Early in February of 2021 it was announced to great fanfare that Tesla had purchased about $1.5 billion in Bitcoin and would now also be accepting Bitcoin for their cars. Bitcoiners were ecstatic with this development, feeling that a company like Tesla, one with a focus on the future and on the environment, purchasing Bitcoin had to be a positive development.
Morgan Creek Digital Assets Partner Anthony Pompliano and Wedbush Securities Managing Director Dan Ives discuss the Bitcoin’s market high after Tesla’s purchase: pic.twitter.com/y8x0mPcpz0
- Yahoo Finance (@YahooFinance) February 8, 2021
Tesla claimed they were investing in Bitcoin for:
more flexibility to further diversify and maximize returns on our cash
https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000156459021004599/tsla-10k_20201231.htm
Tesla seems to believe by purchasing Bitcoin they would be able to eventually earn more from it than they could from cash. This was certainly aided by Elon tweeting about it to his rabid fanbase of intellectually limp followers.
Then comes Tesla’s earning call and it turns out that Elon and Tesla took advantage of their own market pump to sell a big chunk of their bitcoins and make sure that Tesla made a profit for the quarter.
No, you do not. I have not sold any of my Bitcoin. Tesla sold 10% of its holdings essentially to prove liquidity of Bitcoin as an alternative to holding cash on balance sheet.
- Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 26, 2021
Elon claimed he was motivated to do it to “prove liquidity of Bitcoin”, however, this excuse seems to be entirely a load of bloviating nonsense.
Very shortly after this, Tesla announces that it will no longer accept Bitcoins and the circle is completed.
Elon Musk, the great mind of this and every generation, discovers basic facts about Bitcoin after buying $1.5 billion worth and selling enough to make a profit is quintessential charlatan behavior. Elon Musk is supposed to be the modern industrial environmentalist saving the world from the horrors of climate change, and yet the entire he was shilling Bitcoin to his vapid followers, he himself allegedly didn’t understand the energy consumption of Bitcoin. It is a foundational absurdity that hints at the absurdity beneath the surface of much of bitcoin discourse, namely ideology and values exist only insofar as they are aligned with the single overarching philosophy of up and to the right.
The reason Elon Musk is able to jerk the price of Bitcoin around is because he is enabled by Bitcoiners. Individuals like Michael Saylor hang on each narcissistic dribbling from the mouth of the techno-god-king and then treat it either as proof of the superiority of their own position, or immediately treat it as a thing that must be responded because of the impact it could have, thus creating the impact they so feared as both their response and Elon’s initial pronouncement are then distributed through the news and into the market.
Elon’s random memes and every thought do not fundamentally change a single thing about Bitcoin, but when he tweets the price reacts because people expect the price to react! Elon then sees the price react and finds his already over-inflated sense of self begin to grow until he must do it again and again and again each time trying to further validate his own role in the world.
You wanna know why someone like Elon moved from something like Bitcoin to Dogecoin despite it fundamentally having the same problematic environmental incentives as Bitcoin? Because he can take advantage of all of the greater fools even easier. He can find ways to profit for himself, all enabled by those who initially embraces his brand of snake oil. He never actually believed the excuses he made about the environmental impact of Bitcoin, he just was getting bored and looking for a new thrill.
Elon Musk does not understand Bitcoin, does not understand cryptocurrency, and yet influences those markets because nothing matters anymore. Influence is its own currency and Elon Musk is influential enough to cash his influence in for money in his pocket and pomposity, despite exposing himself as a pseudo-intellectual during the process.
Originally published at http://bennettftomlin.com on June 7, 2021.