Crypto investors may have taken comfort in assurances by billionaire Elon Musk who said Wednesday his large personal holdings of bitcoin meant he had no incentive to encourage a fall in prices and they cheered his revelation that he personally owns rival digital asset ethereum.
“If the price of bitcoin goes down, I lose money. I might pump but I don’t dump,” he quipped, in a virtual panel discussion, saying that outside of Tesla Inc.
TSLA,
and SpaceX, bitcoin is his largest holding. The Tesla chief executive also said the electric car maker was likely to resume accepting bitcoin for payment in the future as efforts to tap more renewable energy sources to virtually mine the asset bear fruit.
In addition to his often touted holdings of bitcoin and dogecoin, Musk said he also owns ethereum, while noting that Tesla and SpaceX own bitcoin only.
Bitcoin
BTCUSD,
which had dipped below the $30,000 level on Tuesday to trade at a one-month low, was up 6.4% at $31,696.39 on Wednesday after Musk spoke, while ethereum
ETHUSD,
rose 8.8% to $1,941.61, after briefly jumping above the $2,000 threshold.
