Will Elon Musk Be Allowed To Tweet (And Influence) Crypto Prices?

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Now that the dust has settled and most analysts have accepted that Elon Musk has probably acquired Twitter, questions are arising as to the future of the social media platform. There are many worries, certainly for the (mostly leftwing) employees who are afraid (with some even crying during meetings) of the new direction Musk might take the company.

pic.twitter.com/Q9OjlJhi7f

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 28, 2022

Also the cryptosphere is concerned, as the Tesla CEO has been able to set and move prices with even the posting of a meme in the past.

Bitcoin and Dogecoin jumps

It is true that in 2020, Musk was able to move the price of mostly Dogecoin with a single tweet. Then in the beginning of 2021, when he announced the Tesla would be allowing payments in Bitcoin, the price of the world’s biggest crypto coin jumped some 15% in the next two days.

On the first of April 2021 (which made some think he said it in jest), at a moment when Dogecoin still traded quite cheaply for around 5 cents, Musk said that:

SpaceX is going to put a literal Dogecoin on the literal moon.

The price of the biggest memecoin went as high as 75 cents in the months that followed, and dogecoin was still changing hands at around 14 cents last week.

Hey Elon, will you buy #bitcoin for Twitter’s balance sheet like Tesla’s? pic.twitter.com/MmCMAPBVgu

— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) April 25, 2022

As Musk criticized the cryptosphere in May of 2021 for its output in terms of greenhouse gasses and said he would only accept ‘green’ Bitcoin payments in the future, the price of most crypto coins dropped as a result.

Speaking to Yahoo Finance this week, Emily Parker addressed the ‘elephant in the room’, stating:

Elon Musk is an incredibly rich, incredibly powerful man, who appears to have the ability to move crypto prices with the power of his tweets. And so I think that just raises some questions. And I think it makes regulators nervous. I think it makes individuals nervous. I mean, even if he’s not doing anything technically illegal, it does raise some questions about outsized influence of him personally in the crypto market.

For example, if Musk were to decide, similarly to what he’s done at Tesla and SpaceX in the past, to put Bitcoin on the Twitter books as a treasury asset, it would normally boost the price.

Given Twitter’s visibility in U.S. politics and culture, the company acquiring Bitcoin to hold on its balance sheet would be a big deal

Strahinja Savic, the head of data and analytics at crypto derivatives firm FRNT Financial, admitted to Barron’s on Friday.

rafapress / Depositphotos.com