Elon Musk: Bitcoin is Better than Cash for Value Transfer

The CEO and Founder of SpaceX and Tesla, Elon Musk, has stated that he believes cryptocurrency provides a viable and better alternative to paper money. On February 19th, Elon Musk shared his views surrounding his companies’ futures and answered specific questions about his opinions on cryptocurrency in a podcast with ARK Invest, an investment company.

Musk believes that the structure of bitcoin is “quite brilliant” and that it “bypasses currency controls.” He added that he believes that paper money will become obsolete: “Paper money is going away” and that cryptocurrency is a better way “to transfer values than a piece of paper.”

Musk also stated that certain aspects of the cryptocurrency industry are preventing his companies involving themselves and using the technology. He spoke of cryptocurrency downsides, for example, that in using an extensive network of computers to secure its ledger is “computationally energy intensive.” This stems from his company’s viewpoint of aiming to adopt more sources of sustainable energy and, as such, using such large computing networks as with cryptocurrency may not be an excellent way to use Tesla’s resources.

He said, “It’s very energy intensive to create bitcoin at the point.” Musk has also made comments on cryptocurrency before. Last October, he wrote a cagy tweet about purchasing bitcoin that caused intense speculation online, particularly on social media. He now claims this tweet was a joke.

Elon Musk is not above scammers, however. He has already been impersonated on several occasions on Twitter by fraudsters who try to use fake profiles in crypto give-aways, which he has mentioned in his comments too. He quipped: “Bitcoin and ethereum scammers were so rampant on Twitter I decided to join in and I said at one point, wanna buy some bitcoin?

You can listen to the full interview on the ARK Invest website here.