Musk has been a figurehead in the crypto space for a while with his outlandish tweets — but what crypto does he actually own?
Outside of aerospace and electric cars, Elon Musk has become a prominent figure in the cryptocurrency space. So now, the question on everybody’s mind is “what cryptocurrency does Elon Musk hold?”
The business magnate holds no Shiba Inu (SHIB) coins. It became apparent when Tesla and SpaceX CEO recently responded to the tweet of a much-followed Shiba Inu account. When asked how much of the popular meme cryptocurrency he held, he answered with a distinct ‘none.’
Outside of the meme world, Shiba Inu is the actual dog breed that inspired Dogecoin’s creators due to its unique and striking features. Despite being the second meme cryptocurrency by popularity and market cap, Musk’s unfavorable tweet caused Shib’s price to drop by over 20% in a matter of hours, cementing the entrepreneur’s fame as a crypto influencer.
Musk’s Turbulent History With Cryptocurrencies
The billionaire’s involvement in the industry has intensified in the last year.
With Tesla hitting a $1T valuation, Elon Musk has firmly consolidated his position as the richest man in the world, and, as a consequence, cryptocurrency devotees keep trying to grab his attention with a mention of their crypto asset. With over 60 million followers on Twitter, he’s become one of the most influential personalities in the cryptocurrency space, although unwittingly.
In 2014, Musk had already expressed some interest in Bitcoin, saying that ‘It’s probably a good thing’ while denying rumors that he could be Satoshi Nakamoto. He mentioned in various interviews that he first learned of Bitcoin when a friend sent him some as a gift to make him aware of the technology.
It’s only in 2019 that he started taking the cryptocurrency space more seriously. Due to his past at PayPal, he had always been interested in payment systems and their evolution. He could perceive the decentralization of cryptocurrencies as one of the objectives that PayPal was once trying to achieve, all while recognizing that regulation in the space is equally necessary.
The Billionaire’s Love Affair With Dogecoin
Starting as a joke, Musk began tweeting about Dogecoin (DOGE) and how ‘it rulz’ while posting a picture of a Shiba Inu dog taking a drag of a cigarette in April 2019. Since then, and sometimes with trolling intent and other times with a more serious standpoint, tweeting about Dogecoin became one of Musk’s favorite jokes, causing the meme coin’s price to spike on every occasion.
In May 2020, he went as far as stating that a Dogecoin standard would be inevitable when he posted a picture of a storm featuring a Shiba dog overtaking the global financial market system.
He once tweeted that he was Dogecoin CEO and was nominated by the Doge community as The Dogefather. Yet, another time he appeared more serious when he mentioned that he was working with the cryptocurrency’s developers to improve the system’s transaction efficiency.
All his Doge tweeting has always suggested he owns the meme coin, which he publicly confirmed multiple times too.
In a tweet on Oct. 24, he responded to @prothedoge, saying he owns Doge because it feels like the people’s crypto. This was after talking to people in the production lines of Tesla and SpaceX who know little about finance or the latest Silicon Valley tech.
In another recent tweet prompted by a Dogecoin News account, Musk responded that neither he nor managing director of Neuralink Jared Birchall has anything to do with the Doge Foundation and that he had held no recent interaction with Doge developers.
It’s always been obvious that the billionaire owns Doge, then.
What other cryptocurrency does he hold?
His Long-Term Relationship With Bitcoin
Speaking at the B-Word video conference with Cathie Wood and Jack Dorsey back in July, Elon Musk confirmed that, other than Dogecoin, his personal crypto holdings are Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH). He had never mentioned holding Ethereum before, and, as a result, the price of the cryptocurrency moved up by over 10% in the hours after the live conference.
During that event, he announced for the first time that not only Tesla but also his aerospace company SpaceX was holding Bitcoin in reserves.
Notoriously, in Jan 2021, the billionaire took a powerful move in the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing, announcing to the world that Tesla was holding $1.5 million Bitcoin in reserves. The financial operation had been vaguely pre-emptied in the previous weeks when he tweeted, ‘In retrospect, it was inevitable’ and changed his Twitter profile to include Bitcoin in his bio.
The U.S. electric car maker had also announced that the top cryptocurrency would have been accepted for payment, causing the crypto market to spike and bring the price of Bitcoin to a new all-time high of $64,000 in the following weeks.
Shortly after, however, Tesla’s investors and shareholders raised a red alert on Bitcoin’s fossil-fuel-derived energy consumption and in May, and the eco-friendly carmaker made a U-turn in announcing that it was suspending Bitcoin payments.
The decision was reportedly only temporary, at least until there was evidence that 50% or more of its energy consumption would be coming from renewables. Tesla had also been widely criticized by environmentalists to the point that in order to preserve the image of an eco-friendly company, the company leadership had to take a tough stance and stop Bitcoin payments.
The U-turn sparked controversy among the Bitcoin community that claimed Musk did not know enough of Bitcoin to publicly comment on its energy consumption or go as far as to influence the market.
Several sources have more recently reported a green trend in Bitcoin energy usage, implying a new interest by Tesla to resume Bitcoin payments and further validate what Musk himself had confirmed during the B-word conference.
Other than keeping Bitcoin in reserves for Tesla and SpaceX, Musk declared at the July conference that he owns BTC long-term. Apparently, ‘he pumps but does not dump,’ prompting that, despite being cautious, his relationship with cryptocurrencies is alive and kicking.
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