Elon Musk says on 'The ₿ Word' he'll push prices up but won't sell existing crypto assets

Elon Musk is considered the poster child for "Twitter governing cryptocurrencies," so naturally everyone assumes that he has various personal investments in cryptocurrencies. We know for sure that this is the case with Tesla, so there's a good chance Musk is just promoting his company via Twitter. He confirmed this fact during his "The ₿ Word" video lecture on Tuesday. Musk recently confirmed his personal investments in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Dogecoin, and further promised that he is unlikely to sell these assets in the near future.

The lecture was part of a program hosted by ARK Invest. During the video lecture, in a panel discussion titled "Bitcoin As A Tool For Economic Empowerment," Musk, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood exchanged information and discussed the state of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, their strengths and weaknesses, and the truths and fallacies associated with them. During the lecture, Musk revealed his own personal investments in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Dogecoin, and he further emphasized that he does not plan to sell these assets anytime soon.

Musk explained, “The three things I own outside of SpaceX and Tesla…are Bitcoin, some Ethereum, and some Doge.” “If the price of Bitcoin goes down, I lose money. I might push the price up, but I’m not selling.”

Musk said on The ₿ Word, “[Bitcoin] has an open ledger, which is pretty good. But the transaction volume is low, the transaction costs are high, and the usability for ordinary people is not very good yet, but there is a lot of potential, but overall I support Bitcoin... I do own Bitcoin, Tesla owns Bitcoin, SpaceX owns Bitcoin.”

During the forum, Musk continued to tout alternative cryptocurrency projects such as Ethereum and Doge, saying that Bitcoin's throughput and scalability could be improved by second-layer platforms such as the Lightning Network, and that Tesla could potentially resume Bitcoin payments as a higher percentage of miners utilize renewable energy.

“Bitcoin with a layer 2 system can scale to do a lot of transactions, and I would like to do some more research to confirm that [Bitcoin mining] is likely to be at or above 50% renewable energy and there is a trend towards increasing that number, and if that is the case, Tesla will resume accepting Bitcoin… Most likely, Tesla will resume accepting Bitcoin.”

Dorsey has been favorable toward Bitcoin in his public statements and work, highlighting its transformative nature as a global, permissionless, and internet-native currency.

Cathie Wood described her positive vision for Bitcoin as an investment, "When I saw Bitcoin in 2009, I saw revolutionary innovation coming, it really just opened up an opportunity, and that's what I want to see in my lifetime, an Internet standard and sound money that everyone can use. My firm has been investing more heavily this month, highlighting its current value proposition from an investment perspective, and the significant economic promise of its growing community. Store of value is a great tool that has been sought throughout history, and with Bitcoin being a store of value tool built on top of the blockchain, we think it will enable even more possibilities. I've had the pleasure of meeting the developers at Bitcoin Core, and they understand economic history better than anyone I've ever met."

Interest in the panel was sparked when Musk agreed via Twitter in June to participate in a panel discussion with Dorsey, and on July 19, The ₿ Word also confirmed Musk's attendance.

The ₿ Word is hosted by the Crypto Council For Innovation, a group formed in April to lobby lawmakers and secure more support for cryptocurrency businesses. It was founded by Square, Fidelity, Coinbase and Paradigm.