Key takeaways:
- Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey appeared as guests at the event hosted by the Crypto Council of Innovation.
- The guests talked about their first interactions with Bitcoin and their general outlook on the cryptocurrency sector.
- Both Musk and Dorsey are big supporters of digital currencies and believe that the current banking system is predatory and detrimental to the world’s economic development.
At Wednesday’s live-streamed session hosted at The B Word Conference, Tesla’s self-declared ‘Technoking’ Elon Musk, Twitter’s co-founder Jack Dorsey and ARK Invest’s CEO Cathie Wood appeared as guests. The trio of CEOs was asked poignant questions regarding the cryptocurrency industry.
Dorsey and Musk agree that Bitcoin is a revolutionary system, capable of rivaling the established banking order
Image source: The B Word
When asked about what shaped his views on Bitcoin, Elon Musk explained that it was a natural process as a side effect of his involvement in Paypal and the payment service industry. He pointed out how slow traditional financing institutions are when it comes to processing transactions and added that he was intrigued by the possibilities of blockchain solutions in the financial space since the beginning.
“First rules-based global monetary system ever. This is a very big idea.”
– Cathie Wood, CEO of ARK Invest on Bitcoin
Jack Dorsey’s views on Bitcoin were most directly shaped by the Bitcoin’s network and the community surrounding it. He has been keeping a close eye on it ever since he first started hearing about it in 2009.
His first direct involvement with Bitcoin came very early due to the launch of Square digital payments company in the late 2000s. His views on Bitcoin are very similar to Musk’s as both started a digital payment company as they saw clear negatives in the way the traditional banking sector operates. He pointed out the remittance problem, which is coincidentally one of the main reasons why El Salvador passed the so-called “Bitcoin Law”, in hopes to avoid paying exuberant transaction processing fees.
“It’s deeply principled, it’s weird as hell, it’s always evolving and it just reminded me of the internet when I was a kid.”
– Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter on Bitcoin
Musk has previously criticized Bitcoin for its excessive power consumption and has eventually decided to stop accepting BTC payments for Tesla vehicles. “One thing you do need to watch out for with crypto, especially bitcoin, using proof of work, using energy that’s a bit too much and not necessarily good for the environment,” Musk said.
Nevertheless, he disclosed that both his companies, Tesla and SpaceX, in fact own Bitcoin but no other digital currency at the moment. He also reiterated his position that Tesla will start accepting Bitcoin payments once more, as soon as the carbon footprint of Bitcoin reaches a low enough threshold.
Individually Musk doesn’t own just Bitcoin and Dogecoin but also Ethereum. Following his statements, the price of Ethereum soared and rebounded in a dramatic fashion after a big drop earlier in the week. It is worth pointing out that Ethereum was already closing out a strong single-day performance before Musk’s statements, so it is hard to estimate how big of an impact his statement had.
Generally speaking crypto prices have been on a considerable uptick over the last 48 hours. After prolonged sideways trading during July and a relatively big drop earlier in the week, the total crypto market cap has since increased by 4.3%.
