When someone with the influence and intelligence of Elon Musk mentions crypto, people pay attention.
On the ARKInvest podcast, Musk even seems convinced that crypto is better than cash, and could one day replace paper money.
In the conversation the topic shifted away from Tesla to crypto.
** LINK to podcast here: https://ark-invest.com/research/podcast/elon-musk-podcast **
"Crypto, seriously?" he laughed (remembering when crypto got him into trouble on Twitter!)
"Bitcoin and ethereum scammers were so rampant on Twitter I decided to join in and I said at one point wanna buy some bitcoin? Then I got my account got suspended cause obviously there was like some automatic rule that if you try to sell bitcoin or something and I was just joking."
"I mean I think the bitcoin structure was quite brilliant. It seems like there's some merit to Ethereum as well, and maybe some of the others. But, you know, I'm not sure if it would be a good use of Tesla resources to get into crypto."
"I think actually one of the downsides of crypto is that computationally, is that it's quite energy intensive. So there have to be some kind of constraints on the creation of crypto. So, but it's very energy intensive to create an incremental bitcoin at this point."
Musk then explains why he likes cryptocurrency and sees a future for it, principally for its ability to work as a global currency that no one nation can control.
"It bypasses currency controls. And crypto is a far better way to transfer value than pieces of paper. That's for sure. Without a doubt."