Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Saturday he believes that prices for bitcoin – the cryptocurrency in which his company recently invested $1.5 billion — “seem high.”
Oh, it seems high? Musk has to own some amusement as he watches the fluctuations – since his investment, revealed in an SEC filing on Feb. 8, has largely driven bitcoin to its lofty heights (the crypto rose 16% on that day).
In a Bloomberg story, Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities said Tesla has enjoyed a $1 billion profit since that acquisition.
The past couple of days’ run-up has driven bitcoin’s market cap to more than $1 trillion. Many major backers of bitcoin were surprised, and ethereum, the No. 2 cryptocurrency, also hit records.
Musk’s tweet was a reply to gold backer Peter Schiff, who said gold is better than Bitcoin.
“Money is just data that allows us to avoid the inconvenience of barter,” tweeted Musk, a major proponent of digital currencies. “That data, like all data, is subject to latency & error. The system will evolve to that which minimizes both.”
In a following post, Musk added, “that said, BTC & ETH do seem high lol,” in a response to a user who said gold was better than both bitcoin and cash.
Bitcoin hit record high of $57,527 on Saturday before pulling back to $57,040 during the afternoon in New York.
February has been a good month, too, seeing an increase of more than 50% — it also gained four times its value during 2020.
Ethereum hit $2,040.62, marking a weekly gain of roughly 12%. It was trading at $1,996 on Saturday.
Musk called Bitcoin a “less dumb” version of cash earlier last week.
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