Elon Musk Says ‘Paper Money Is Going Away’, Bitcoin Is ‘Brilliant’ But Not for Tesla
In a new podcast entitled “On the Road to Full Autonomy With Elon Musk,” the Tesla founder agrees that the financial system is on the cusp of a revolution.
According to Musk,
“Paper money is going away. Crypto is a far better way to transfer value than pieces of paper, that’s for sure.”
Despite Musk’s prediction, however, there are no crypto plans for Tesla.
Musk revved up the crypto community last year when he tweeted about Bitcoin, sparking speculation that the electric car company would shift gears and move into crypto.
Wanna buy some Bitcoin? 😉😉 pic.twitter.com/9ZbBJ5fuVq
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 22, 2018
But the tech entrepreneur clarified in the interview that the company has no such plans to get involved with Bitcoin or crypto-related activities.
Speaking with ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood and analyst Tasha Keeney, Musk, who has a history in the payments industry as a co-founder of PayPal, shared his general thoughts on Bitcoin as an emerging technology.
“I think the Bitcoin structure is quite brilliant, and it seems like there’s some merit to Ethereum as well. But I’m not sure it would be a good use of Tesla resources to get involved in crypto.”
As an engineer who has spent years with Tesla’s team to optimize speed, safety and energy consumption, the entrepreneur says Bitcoin has pros and cons, and that he’s concerned about cryptocurrency mining, which is an energy intensive process that confirms network transactions.
“We’re really just trying to accelerate the advance of sustainable energy, and I think one of the down sides of crypto is that computationally it’s quite energy intensive. There had to be some kind of constraints on the creation of crypto. But it’s very energy intensive to create slightly incremental Bitcoin, at this point.”
Given the use case for Bitcoin in Africa, however, where businesses use crypto for “free transmission of money” and to avoid costly bank fees, Musk agrees that Bitcoin and other decentralized assets can bypass currency controls, and beat the banks at moving value.
You can listen to the full podcast here.
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