What Elon Musk said about Bitcoin during today's packed Clubhouse event (2024)

I don’t know about you but around two hours ago, I had my eyes and fingers glued to my iPhone trying to join the latest Clubhouse even with Elon Musk.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get in.

Well, kind of. I quickly found a bootleg stream of the event on Youtube and another on Discord set up by some friends.

What happened next was fascinating.

What’s Clubhouse?

On Sunday, Elon Musk, the ever-venerable CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, announced that he would be joining Clubhouse.

On Clubhouse tonight at 10pm LA time

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 31, 2021

Clubhouse is a Silicon Valley-focused social media application that is audio-only. That’s to say, the only way you can communicate with one another is through audio, no video or text.

Clubhouse has risen to prominence as a place for innovators, venture investors, and more to convene and talk about interesting societal trends and issues. Musk joining was validation of the platform.

So tens of thousands, likely even hundreds of thousands, crammed onto Clubhouse just hours ago to try and join the “room” with Musk.

Only 5,000 individuals got in. In this case, I was not one of them.

Thoughts on Bitcoin

Going into the Clubhouse, many on Crypto Twitter were commenting that they expected the billionaire Tesla CEO to touch on Bitcoin, Ethereum, and similar subjects.

This expectation was built after Musk was spotted changing his bio to “#Bitcoin” and liking a tweet regarding Ethereum and decentralized finance.

So, around 30 minutes into the Clubhouse room, someone asks Musk about his thoughts on digital currencies.

To that, Musk responded by saying that he thinks “Bitcoin is on the verge of getting broad acceptance among finance people.” The connotation appeared to be positive as he later said that “Bitcoin is a good thing.”

BTC shot $400 higher after he made these comments, then rapidly corrected lower as he, unlike some expected, didn’t announce that he had acquired Bitcoin or other digital assets.

"Bitcoin is on the verge of getting broad acceptance among finance people" @elonmusk on CH

— Santiago R Santos (@santiagoroel) February 1, 2021

Whatever the case, many see Musk’s comments as more good than bad.

He has previously said that he “likes” Bitcoin’s “structure” and that it may have more value than “ghost government money,” referencing currencies such as the U.S. dollar.

Almost a DeFi fan

What was equally as notable in this Clubhouse discussion, Musk invited Vladimir Tenev, the chief executive of Robinhood, to talk about what had happened over the past week with Gamestop.

According to an account of the conversation by a prominent crypto commentator, Musk grilled the fintech chief executive, asking Vlad if he “sold your customers up the river.”

Elon: "Did you sell your customers up the river?"

Vlad: "We had to comply with regulatory requirements to serve our customers."

— Autism Capital ? (@AutismCapital) February 1, 2021

He, along with other investors like Chamath Palihapitiya, have ardently been against Robinhood as this recent controversy has played out.

It has been argued that seeing his views on this debate, Musk would be a good proponent of DeFi, in that it’s right up his alley. It may be no surprise then that just the other day, one of the tweets he liked was that of Zerion, a tool for DeFi users.

Disclaimer: This author is an analyst at ParaFi Capital. ParaFi Capital may hold positions in assets mentioned in this article. The views displayed in this article are opinions of the author—and the author only.

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