Elon Musk adds #bitcoin to Twitter Bio, prompting the price by 14%. Are any other billionaires flooding in?
On Jan 1, Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla & SpaceX, added #bitcoin to his Twitter profile. The price of the Bitcoin spiked 14% from $32,000 to $38,000 within the next 30mins, marking a new high in the past two weeks.
Although Musk claims he owns only 0.25 BTC, the crypto community believe that the doubt about “whether the world’s richest man is one of us” has been erased.
Billionaires rushing in
As a matter of fact, more and more top billionaires are rushing into the crypto world. KD, Global Business VP of MXC Exchange, a crypto trading platform taking up 5% of the market share, believes that these people form a “big name effect”. With the capital and attention they have, them joining the crypto space would bring it to the broader public, and the various cryptocurrencies led by Bitcoin might become the common alternative investment choices.
On Feb 2 last year, Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter, introduced the Bitcoin emoji — if you add a hashtag before Bitcoin or BTC, the emoji will show up. He then added #bitcoin to his Twitter profile too. Coincidently, the Bitcoin price surged from $9,000 to $10,000 8 days after.
As a firm supporter of Bitcoin, Jack Dorsey once claimed in public that he was trying to buy as many Bitcoin as possible. He has been stocking $10,000 worth of Bitcoin every month since Mar 2019.
Early in 2014, traditional Internet venture capitalist Tim Draper bought 30,000 BTC in the US Marshals auction. Since then, the venture capitalist has remained fascinated by crypto-assets and even transferred his stock to Bitcoin.
In response to CNBC’s question on how many Bitcoin he owns, he said: “a lot.” He even predicted prior to the 2020 Bitcoin halving that the price of Bitcoin will reach $250,000 in 2020 or early 2023. The reason is that the U.S. dollar is plummeting, the Federal Reserve will print a value of 9 trillion U.S. dollars, and the interest in buying Bitcoin will rise eventually. From the market performance in the past two months, seems that Draper’s prediction is turning into reality to some degree.
Wall Street celebrities did not look upon Bitcoin in the early years, but as the overall market value of cryptocurrency rising, many people are becoming Bitcoin supporters. Wall Street macro trader Paul Tudor Jones, with a net worth of $5.1 billion, said in an interview with CNBC in May 2020 that his Bitcoin holdings accounted for 1% of his total assets.
In addition, in a letter to shareholders, he believed that Bitcoin is a hedge against inflation caused by the coronavirus. He wrote: “Ultimately, the best profit maximization strategy is to have the fastest racehorse… If I had to predict, I would bet on Bitcoin.”
Chamath Palihapitiya, the founder of Social Capital and former Facebook executive, invested in Bitcoin as early as 2013. Palihapitiya purchased Bitcoin at a price of only $80, claiming to own about 5% of the entire Bitcoin circulation supply at the time.
Of course, not all rich people have accepted Bitcoin the first time they heard about Bitcoin. There are many people who have experienced the process from resistance to acceptance.
For example, Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, Mulan Pictures, and Landmark Cinemas, the most well-known investor in the United States, has publicly stated that instead of holding Bitcoin, he would rather “hold a banana.” But last year, he changed the attitude and said: “We are accepting Bitcoin.” He also called on everyone to buy things with Bitcoin. It’s just that he said that he only holds $130 in Bitcoin.
In fact, there are many people who were not on the top rich list but have become one of them with their early holding of a large number of Bitcoin. For example, Brian Armstrong, who founded Coinbase in 2012 when the price of Bitcoin was only $10. Although the owner of the world’s largest exchange remains silent on the amount of Bitcoin he holds, according to Forbes estimates, his personal assets are between US$900 million and US$1 billion, making him a billionaire following Bill Gates. But ten years ago, he was just a common Silicon Valley worker.
There is also the “notorious” Winklevoss twins in Silicon Valley. They used the first pot of gold they earned from a lawsuit with Facebook to buy Bitcoin and founded the Gemini exchange. They are currently recognized as “Bitcoin tycoons” “. Allegedly, they hold 1% of the total Bitcoin.
KD believes that, as the stock market, crypto assets are susceptible to fluctuations caused by information from all walks of life. As the top wealthy people change their attitudes towards Bitcoin and other crypto assets, the market value of crypto is likely to increase significantly. That will be something that all crypto-asset holders love to hear.
“This is great news for the crypto people. But opportunities and challenges coexist for trading platforms with the increased traction. Only by continuously optimizing the product experience and by ensuring traders with safety, good liquidity, and quality projects, can we turn challenges into opportunities. Actually, this is the mission of MXC. Persistence to fulfill the mission has enabled us to stand out from the DeFi boom. I believe that as crypto assets will be more recognized by the market, and so will MXC.” KD said.
