Dogecoin Jokes Didn’t Help the Price
Also moon rockets, meme thievery, sovereign bond allocations and sock tokens.
When Elon Musk does Bitcoin things, the price of Bitcoin goes up. One possible reason for this is that Elon Musk is a rich famous weird guy with a fandom; people pay attention to what he does and get entertainment out of it. When he seems to have fun with Bitcoin, other people say “hey Bitcoin looks fun” and buy Bitcoin, so the price of Bitcoin goes up.
Another possible reason is that Elon Musk is the chief executive officer of two big influential futuristic companies, and he plays a role in shaping the possible future of the global economy. If Tesla Inc. announced that you can only pay for Teslas in Bitcoin, or if SpaceX announced that the only legal tender on Mars will be Bitcoin, that would be good for Bitcoin demand. There is a sort of future-of-the-galactic-economy case for Bitcoin that Elon Musk can bolster. And in fact Tesla has said that it will (non-exclusively) accept Bitcoins for Teslas, and that it will keep a portion of its corporate cash in Bitcoin. Tesla, a big important company that Musk runs, is making real business decisions that seem to be bullish for Bitcoin. If you buy Bitcoin based on Musk’s half-joking Twitter enthusiasm, you could be making a sensible bet on business fundamentals.