Making Sense Of Elon’s BTC U-Turn Antics

Ché Köhler
4 min readMay 20, 2021

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I have been reading all about the latest Elon Drama with Bitcoin. First, they loved him for buying 1.5 Billion USD worth of Bitcoin for Tesla; then we were torn when he sold to bag a profit but still kept a large portion of Bitcoin on the balance sheet. Then we raved when he said that Telsa would accept BTC payments for their cars, probably where he got the extra BTC to dump too.

Now his turned around and said Bitcoin is not green enough for him, and they won’t be accepting BTC payments but will keep the Bitcoin on their balance sheet.

This news shocked the market, and Elon’s acolytes with their paper hands and hard-ons for Elon sold off their positions, tanking the Bitcoin price in the process. Now everyone and their grandmother want to lecture Elon about the greenness of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin boiling the oceans

This is a new narrative to emerge as the mining network became more powerful, the amount of energy Bitcoin uses to mint assets and maintain the network continues to grow. Having these open stats on consumption allows you to compare Bitcoin to anything you want to make a point. Oh, it uses more electricity than x city or y country.

Okay, but how much electricity does everything else use? Pretty sure the British at tea time use as much electricity as Bitcoin with their kettles, no one telling them they can’t enjoy a cup of tea. How much economic value do tea drinkers really bring to the world?

If we are going to look at it through that lens, then we should all stop using energy and go back to the stone age.

Be honest about Bitcoin consumption

Bitcoin uses a shit load of energy; that is true; I think Bitcoiners need to accept that since it’s only going to require more energy in the future.

However, Bitcoin is an incentive-based system; it’s always going to look for the cheapest energy or the energy that no one is competing for; if it didn’t, the miners wouldn’t be able to make a profit. Miners are incentivised to find the cheapest, least competitive electricity.

This can come from hydro, wind, solar, gas flaring and more; its energy that was produced that otherwise would have gone to waste. Like it or not, we don’t have the greatest battery tech, and Bitcoin actually performs the function of a battery, allowing us to store what would have been wasted energy for future consumption.

Facts don’t matter; it’s all about feelings

Facts don’t matter in crypto. If it did, most of these shitcoins would have been dead by now; it all about narratives and feelings. The better story you can tell, the more money you can attract, so Bitcoin is the big bad wolf killing the worlds power supply.

So every altcoin in the world is getting a stiffy trying to promote how green they are with their pre-mined proof of stake networks. The fact is Elon doesn’t give to shits about how to green your project is; he’s doing it to cosy up to the fiat money spigot.

So you look like a dumbass saying, or Cardano doesn’t use so much electricity, lol, shut the fuck up.

Elon needs big daddy government

The fact is Telsa would die tomorrow if it weren’t for government subsidies, Elon knows this, and no matter how much you pump his stock price or put BTC on his balance sheet, the companies lifeblood comes from the government support as Europe goes into this green mandate as well as Biden putting forth a green agenda.

There are literally trillions of freshly printed Euros and USD ready to be deployed into making developed economies greener. Elon is simply trying to front-run that by cosying up to the elites and rejecting Bitcoin.

Car companies are going to all jump on this trend; we’ve seen VW making moves in EV, and their share price exploded, and Elon realises competition is heating up, and if he wants to take on the greater market share, he needs to secure as much cash as he can upfront to take on competitors.

At least this is the way I see it, given the incentives on the table.

Don’t be butt hurt by Elon’s comments; he is just a businessman looking out for his self-interest, as you should too. I know I am by picking up these dips.

All I can say is thanks for the 20% + discount; I appreciate you helping me build my stack.

Source: Leofinance

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Ché Köhler

Co-founder of nichemarket, a South African Business Directory and digital marketing agency — https://www.nichemarket.co.za/ ⚡️dressyvise20@walletofsatoshi.com