Tesla Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Elon Musk on February 19 defended Tesla’s purchase of Bitcoin, saying that owning some of the digital currency is “adventurous enough” for an S&P 500 company.
“Having some Bitcoin, which is simply a less dumb form of liquidity than cash, is adventurous enough for an S&P500 company,” Musk tweeted on Thursday in response to an interview with Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao.
Musk also said he is an engineer, not an investor, and that apart from his stock in Tesla, he does not own any equity.
Musk even compared Bitcoin with fiat currency or government-issued currency that is not backed by a physical commodity, such as gold or silver.
In the interview, Zhao said he was surprised that Musk was an advocate of Dogecoin, which was created as a joke. Musk has recently tweeted about the Shiba Inu-themed token, sparking a surge in its price. Last week, he said he had bought some for his 9-month-old son.
“I strongly believe that he’s not really associated with Dogecoin in any way,” Zhao said of Musk, noting that Tesla’s bet was on bitcoin and not on the “joke” asset.
Binance has added Dogecoin futures recently based on consumer demand. That’s because it’s gaining popularity for reasons nobody expected, Zhao said.
Zhao told in an interview, that as bitcoin had surged, Binance had seen more than 300,000 new user registrations daily. Volumes on the exchange are even higher than they were in 2017, he said.
“There’s a lot more activity now in this industry than three years ago,” Zhao said. “We are just at the beginning.”
Bitcoin on Friday rose by 2%, to about $52,740, as of 9:40 a.m. GMT
