Bitcoin prices spike as Elon Musk changes Twitter bio, netizens call him 'real influencer'

After Tesla CEO Elon Musk simply wrote ‘#bitcoin’ in his Twitter biography, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency jumped as much as 20 per cent on January 29. According to CNBC, Bitcoin climbed suddenly at around 3:30am ET, adding $5,000 in the space of an hour to trade at $37,299. Within two hours, the cryptocurrency was trading 17 per cent higher in the last 24 hours at around $36.000. 

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Netizens call Musk ‘a real influencer’ 

Following the surge in Bitcoin’s price action, Musk, who is followed by 43.7 million Twitteraties, was hailed as a “real influencer”. Netizens flooded Twitter and thanked Musk for his support to the “bitcoin movement”. One user even called it the “Elon Musk effect” while sharing the picture of the trading chart. Another user wrote, “It’s been elon time we’ve been waiting for this”. 

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Meanwhile, Musk’s addition of bitcoin to his social media profile comes after much speculation about whether the Tesla CEO will buy bitcoin or add the cryptocurrency to his electric car firm’s balance sheet. Musk even made headlines after a Twitter exchange with Michael Saylor, the CEO of software company MicroStrategy last month, which came after a tweet suggesting that he was tempted to buy bitcoin. “If you want to do your shareholders a $100 billion favour, convert the $TSLA balance sheet from USD to #BTC,” Saylor said at the time. In response, Musk said: “Are such large transactions even possible?”

Musk has a record of making market-moving comments on the site. Earlier, GameStop Corp, which has been at the centre of retail trading frenzy, surged 50 per cent after Musk tweet “Gamestonk”, along with a link to the Reddit Wallstreetbets stock trading discussion group.

Bitcoin, on the other hand, jumped over 300 per cent last year, as bigger US investors and corporations sought exposure to the cryptocurrency. It also touched an all-time high of $42,000 last month. As per reports, the digital coin is still about 13 per cent off its all-time high but up around 25 per cent since the start of the year. Bitcoin more than quadrupled over the course of 2020, with crypto bulls citing increased institutional investment as a driving force of the rally.

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