Bitcoin Drops 5% After Elon Musk Tweets Breakup Meme
He tweeted a broken heart emoji alongside the hashtag #bitcoin.
Elon Musk‘s tweets appear to have once again moved markets, this time shifting bitcoin in the downward direction after implying that he was breaking up with the digital coin.
Musk on Thursday tweeted a broken heart emoji alongside the hashtag #bitcoin and an accompanying meme.
#Bitcoin 💔 pic.twitter.com/lNnEfMdtJf
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 4, 2021
Hours later, Musk tweeted out another meme implying some sort of market crash.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 4, 2021
Musk did not further specify whether he had sold his bitcoin holdings, though the news sent the price of bitcoin tumbling. In the early hours of Friday morning, bitcoin’s price sunk to $35,814 USD, according to Coindesk, down from a high of $39,212 USD the evening prior. At the time of writing, bitcoin had recovered slightly and was hovering around $37,000 USD.
Coindesk said the cryptocurrency was down about 5 percent within the last 24 hours, with a net change of about $1,700 USD. The coin reached an all-time high of $64,829 USD in mid-April.
Earlier this month, a single-word twitter response from Musk sent the coin plummeting by about 8.5 percent. Musk said that Tesla would accept bitcoin as a form of payment for its electric vehicles back in late March, but reversed the decision earlier this month, citing the environmental costs of mining blockchain assets.
Last week, Musk said that he had spoken with North American bitcoin miners to discuss making usage more sustainable. He ended off the tweet saying discussions were “Potentially promising,” with bitcoin prices swinging in a positive direction.
