A week ago, we wrote about Tesla’s decision to stop accepting Bitcoin payments. It caused the price of BTC to plummet within 24 hours. Unfortunately for Bitcoin enthusiasts, it did not recover, at least not as they expected. And many of them blame Elon Musk for this!
On Reddit and other social media platforms, the Tesla boss has been accused of running a pump-and-dump scheme. As a reminder, his company bought 1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin in February; three months later, they decided to sell about 10% of the assets – it happened just a couple of weeks before the decision to stop Bitcoin payments at Tesla.
As a result, the Bitcoin price fell under $40,000 at one point, thus returning to the pre-February levels (before Musk got involved).
Barstool Owner Portnoy Joins Anti-Musk Twitter Mob
Of course, Elon Musk’s decision isn’t the only reason behind Bitcoin’s recent downfall. Other reasons include Turkey’s decision to ban crypto trading and China’s decision to widen its cryptocurrency crackdown.
Nevertheless, cryptocurrency enthusiasts continue to blame the South African entrepreneur.
On Reddit, cryptocurrency threads are full of posts blaming Musk of running a pump-and-dump scheme. Redditors accuse him of intentionally manipulating the price of Bitcoin in order to sell it at the highest possible rate. Some of them accuse him of doing the same with Dogecoin.
Musk isn’t getting negative comments only from anonymous posters on Reddit, but from celebrity businesspersons as well. The founder of Barstool Sports, David Portnoy is one of them.
Portnoy recently shared a video message on Twitter, in which he spoke about Musk “pulling the levers like he’s the Wizard of Oz on crypto.”
“He’s sending Dogecoin up, he’s sending Bitcoin down. This is bullsh*t,” Portnoy said about Elon Musk’s Bitcoin involvement.
Bitcoin Bulls Keep HODL-ing
Elon Musk denied the allegations that he’s been running a crypto pump-and-dump scheme, saying that his company sold only about 10% of their crypto assets.
One of the reasons behind that decision was “to prove liquidity of Bitcoin as an alternative to holding cash on balance sheet.”
Musk also stated that he still believes Bitcoin is a good thing. His opinion is shared by a number of Bitcoin bulls who have no intention of selling off their assets.
“The pullback we’re seeing today is driven by panicked selling,” said Matt Hougan from Bitwise Asset Management. According to him, Musk’s recent decisions did not make have as high impact on Bitcoin as they had on people owning Bitcoin, who started panicking.
Panic caused them to start selling, which made the price tumble down. However, such things are to be expected from Bitcoin, according to Hougan. Bitcoin price does chance often, and it will continue to do so. We mustn’t forget that this cryptocurrency went from about $4,000 to nearly $70,000 in just one year.
In short term, oscillations in price are perfectly normal. In the long run, the price of Bitcoin is likely to follow an upward trajectory.
What this all means is that HODL-ing seems like the right kind of decision at this moment.
