Opinion: Elon Musk Is Poison for Crypto

The crypto industry should run away from Elon Musk as fast as possible. Just look at what he's done to Bitcoin, Dogecoin and Crypto Twitter

Features writer Connor Sephton Features writer Connor Sephton About Author Connor Sephton is a journalist based in London, who also works for Sky News and the BBC as a radio newsreader and online reporter. He has covered crypto since 2018 — reporting from major conferences... Author Profile Share Copied Last updated: September 5, 2024 07:16 EDT

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On the dumpster fire now known as X, there’s no shortage of crypto accounts cheering Elon Musk’s every move.

He’s the savior of free speech! He’s taking on corrupt governments! He’s protecting the U.S. Constitution! He’s creating an army of citizen journalists!

Admiration for the world’s richest man, often from DOGE-themed profiles, is breathless and borderline cult-like. Even if Musk destroyed a child’s Christmas presents, there would still be anonymous supporters praising how much of a visionary he is.

No matter what, this platform will always protect your freedom of speech. pic.twitter.com/w0QUmZ1rgV — DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) September 3, 2024

There’s no doubt that he’s an accomplished businessman, with Tesla and SpaceX breaking boundaries and offering true innovation. But when it comes to crypto, Musk is nothing but poison — and the industry should run for the hills.

Too many of his devoted acolytes have happily forgotten how he continually boosted Dogecoin to millions of followers, only to describe it as a “hustle” on Saturday Night Live. Hours later, DOGE plunged by 36% — and has never returned to all-time highs of $0.73 since.

Aggrieved investors brought a $258 billion lawsuit against Musk, alleging he had manipulated the memecoin’s value. It’s worth noting that this case has now been thrown out by a judge, but there’s little doubt his continued tweets could have sucked some people in — causing financial harm.

This forms part of an all-too-familiar pattern, with Bitcoin also falling victim to the billionaire’s whims. The world’s biggest cryptocurrency rallied by 20% when he added #bitcoin to his Twitter bio. Markets also went berserk when Musk declared that Tesla would accept BTC as a payment method, with the electric vehicle giant purchasing $1.5 billion and adding it to its balance sheet.

None of this was to last. Musk quietly removed #bitcoin from his bio, with BTC hashtag emojis vanishing from the website altogether. Teslas could no longer be purchased using this digital asset because of environmental concerns. And to add insult to injury, the company dumped 75% of its holdings to boost cashflow, despite Musk saying it wouldn’t.

When you combine all of this together, it’s laughable to suggest that Musk is a pro-crypto ally — someone who is interested in developing the industry and broadening adoption. Instead, it becomes painfully clear that this is a rich man who sees BTC and DOGE as nothing more than a plaything… to the detriment of his many admirers.

RIP Crypto Twitter

Before Musk got his hands on it, Twitter was the place to be for the latest information on what’s going on in crypto. It’s now unusable. Doling out blue check marks to anyone willing to pay for one has undermined what verification was for in the first place — and has elevated clickbait farms, liars and trolls while drowning out authoritative sources who know what they’re talking about. Bots remain as pervasive as ever, and misinformation is an epidemic.

On X, For You feeds are clogged with dodgy ads, crypto scams, violent videos, and far-right voices — whether you want them or not. And if you’d like a powerful reflection of how self-centered Musk really is, it’s telling that his posts regularly appear here too, even if you don’t follow him. It was comical to see X’s “Chief Troll Officer” insist that the site had suffered a distributed denial-of-service attack as he attempted to “interview” Donald Trump on Spaces, when it’s painfully obvious that wasn’t true.

The misinformation now published on this hellsite — and regularly amplified by Musk — has real-world consequences. Researchers from the Center for Countering Digital Hate recently claimed that he had posted false claims about the U.S. election more than 50 times. He’s also gone on the warpath against other major economies. He bizarrely wrote that civil war in the U.K. was “inevitable” following far-right protests. Those self-same riots followed the awful killings of three young girls in a knife attack in the North of England, with inaccurate details about the man responsible posted on, you got it, X.

While Musk continually bangs the drum about freedom of speech, it often feels like this only extends to speech he agrees with. There was a backlash after left-wing journalists on X were suspended from the site, and they were quietly reinstated.

Just this week, accusations of double standards emerged when Musk happily posted an AI-generated image of Kamala Harris dressed as a communist dictator. This is a breach of X’s own policies on manipulated media, yet no Community Note has appeared.

Kamala vows to be a communist dictator on day one. Can you believe she wears that outfit!? https://t.co/Anu9tKQHXN pic.twitter.com/ISKFXYnSon — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 2, 2024

But when an account called @YourAnonNews uploaded a rival picture that depicted Musk and Trump kissing while in Nazi uniforms, a warning was added.

Faking a warning? It appears you didn’t make anyone mad. pic.twitter.com/zRxJ615wtf — MAZE (@mazemoore) September 3, 2024

Almost always, Musk’s ire is reserved for the critics, countries, politicians and institutions that stand in his empire’s way — or don’t further his interests. He’s railed against Kamala Harris and the Democrats, because Trump is better for business. He’s described the judge who banned X in Brazil because of disinformation as an “evil tyrant,” and likened him to Voldemort. There’s also been fierce criticism for leaders in Ireland and Canada after they pursued regulations that would affect the social network.

There’s no denying that there’s a vocal army of crypto accounts on X that have fully signed up to Musk’s right-leaning worldview, and now back him to the hilt at every turn. But there’s a risk that this could lead newcomers and regulators to assume that the whole of the digital assets space is like this, when the opposite is true. A survey by The Nakamoto Project recently found that “Bitcoin ownership is not meaningfully related to political orientation” — and U.S. investors tend to be more moderate than Musk is.

Musk is now waging battles on many fronts — and the risk of X imploding is increasing. That would be disastrous for the vibrant crypto communities still to be found on this platform. And what’s more, his ownership of X is a textbook definition of centralization — with Musk the single point of failure that can bring everything crashing down.

Right now, it seems like a matter of when things will end in tears for this dumpster fire of a website — rather than if.

Disclaimer: The opinions in this article are the writer’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of Cryptonews.com. This article is meant to provide a broad perspective on its topic and should not be taken as professional advice.