Bitcoin Price Soars 14 Percent After Elon Musk Namecheck on Twitter

Elon Musk wrote simply "#bitcoin" in his biography on the social media site.

By Reuters | Updated: 29 January 2021 17:32 IST

Bitcoin Price Soars 14 Percent After Elon Musk Namecheck on Twitter

Smaller cryptocurrencies including ethereum and XRP that tend to move in tandem with Bitcoin also jumped

Highlights

Elon Musk has a record of making market-moving comments on Twitter
GameStop surged 50 percent on Tuesday after Musk's tweet
Bitcoin jumped over 300 percent last year

Bitcoin jumped as much as 14 percent on Friday to a two-week high after Tesla chief Elon Musk tagged the cryptocurrency in his Twitter biography.

Musk wrote simply "#bitcoin" in his biography on the social media site. The world's biggest cryptocurrency was up 10.2 percent at $36,901 (roughly Rs. 26.9 lakhs) as of 10:05 GMT (3:35pm IST) .

The billionaire entrepreneur, followed by 43.8 million users on Twitter, has a record of making market-moving comments on the site.

[Sponsored] Samsung Galaxy S24: The Ultimate Camera Phone With Smarter On-Device AI

GameStop, which has been at the centre of retail trading frenzy, surged 50 percent on Tuesday after Musk tweeted "Gamestonk!!", along with a link to the Reddit Wallstreetbets stock trading discussion group. There, supporters affectionately refer to him as "Papa Musk."

"Stonks" is a tongue-in-cheek term for stocks widely used on social media.

Bitcoin jumped over 300 percent last year, as bigger US investors and corporations sought exposure to the cryptocurrency. It touched an all-time high of $42,000 (roughly Rs. 30.6 lakhs) last month.

Bitcoin Extends Slide, Heads for Worst Week Since March 2020

In December, Musk asked about the possibility of converting "large transactions" of Tesla's balance sheet into bitcoin, in a Twitter exchange with a well-known advocate for the digital currency.

"That would be a very big deal," said Christopher Bendiksen of digital asset manager CoinShares on Friday.

Traders also cited positive comments on Bitcoin by hedge fund manager Ray Dalio as supporting sentiment.

The Bridgewater Associates founder wrote on Thursday that the cryptocurrency was "one hell of an invention," adding that he viewed it as a "gold-like alternative asset."

Smaller cryptocurrencies including ethereum and XRP that tend to move in tandem with Bitcoin also jumped, as much as 5 percent and 8 percent respectively.

© Thomson Reuters 2021

Is LG Wing's unique design alone enough to help it succeed in India? We discussed this on Orbital, our weekly technology podcast, which you can subscribe to via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or RSS, download the episode, or just hit the play button below.

Affiliate links may be automatically generated - see our ethics statement for details.

Cryptocurrency Prices across Indian exchanges

Comments

For the latest tech news and reviews, follow Gadgets 360 on X, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads and Google News. For the latest videos on gadgets and tech, subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you want to know everything about top influencers, follow our in-house Who'sThat360 on Instagram and YouTube.