Elon Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX entrepreneur, is making headlines again. Over the last week, we’ve had the controversy over the naming of his latest offspring, his nmother-in-law condemning his ‘red pill’ tweets, and now, unable to stay out of the press, he has slammed the Federal Reserve’s coronavirus stimulus package.
Musk claims that US fiscal policy has become “detached from reality,” and that it should be viewed in sharp contrast with “bitcoin’s looming supply squeeze,” as reported by Billy Bambrough. Now, Musk has gone a step further, according to Bambrough in Forbes, where he quotes the entrepreneur as saying “the central bank currency issuance” is making cryptocurrency bitcoin look “solid by comparison.”
Harry Potter and the Bitcoin Blockchain
Rather bizarrely, Musk’s latest statements came in response to a query from Harry Potter author, J.K. Rowling about how bitcoin works. The two are prolific Twitter users, and this is where the conversation took place on 15th May.
Rowling tweeted, “People are now explaining Bitcoin to me, and honestly, it’s blah blah blah collectibles (My Little Pony?) blah blah blah computers (got one of those) blah blah blah crypto (sounds creepy) blah blah blah understand the risk (I don’t, though.)
In reply, Musk told her Bitcoin looked solid by comparison with the currency issued by central banks, and said that he still owns 0.25 BTC. Cointelegraph stepped into the fray, and tweeted, “I think wveryone is just waiting for you to send them to the moon Elon,” which resulted in some comic responses in the form of Buzz Lightyear memes.
However, it seems nobody was able to convince Rowling about bitcoin, as she later tweeted, “I’m just about able to grasp a barter system. Talk of collectibles, tokenomics and blockchains and my brain just takes a walk.”
Vitalik Buterin of Ethereum then stepped up to provide the creator of wizards with his explanation, and Neeraj Agrawal, of Washington-based cryptocurrency policy think tank Coincenter, really tried to get Rowling to understand it by saying it was “magical Internet money.” Tyler Winklevoss objected to this, replying bitcoin was not ‘magical’, it was the US dollar that could be described that way.
J.K. Rowling may not have been convinced by the responses of the various cryptocurrency heavyweights, but as Bitcoin Magazine tweeted,
“Dear Diary, Today was a wild ride for #BitcoinTwitter.”