Elon Musk taken care of immediately a tweet from Dave Portnoy stating he still hasn’t sold any one of his personal bitcoin holdings.
Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy called into question Elon Musk activity with bitcoin late Monday, drawing an instant rebuke from the Tesla CEO.
Portnoy, aka @stoolpresidente, couched his criticism as a concern, saying in a tweet “Am I understanding this correctly? Elon Musk buys bitcoin. Then pumps it. It goes up. He then dumps it and makes a fortune.
Musk replied to the tweet saying “No you’re not.” And proceeded to state he continues to put up bitcoin
Tesla (TSLA) – Get Report made about $100 million on the sale of some of its bitcoin, the company disclosed Monday as it reported strong results for the first quarter.
Musk has tweeted about other cryptocurrencies within the last couple of months, including Dogecoin, whose price has soared in recent weeks. Musk tweeted about any of it in early February and again earlier this month. Dogecoin, without any limit on how many altcoins which can be created, was started as a satire in 2013. It’s soared from significantly less than one cent to as high as 43 cents up to now this season, based on Coinmarketcap data.
The excitement around the recent IPO of Coinbase (COIN) – Get Report, the largest U.S. cryptocurrency exchange, has boosted interest in cryptocurrencies in general. Its stock, however, has faltered since coming public through a direct listing. It ended its first day of trading on April 14 at $328.28. Coinbase ended Monday up 4.4% at $304.54.
In March, Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell said the central bank is looking at a digital dollar but is in no hurry to launch one. He said cryptocurrencies are generally acting as a substitue for gold.
“Crypto assets are highly volatile –see Bitcoin — and therefore not very useful as a store of value, and they’re not backed by anything,” Powell said at the time. “It’s more a speculative asset. It’s essentially a substitute for gold rather than for the dollar.”