Elon Musk, CEO of social media platform X and electric car maker Tesla, on Thursday said he was open to the idea of using Bitcoin on X but thought little about BTC in daily life.
His remarks came at a space broadcast moderated by Cathie Wood, CEO of ARK Invest with the ETF agenda after the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved Bitcoin ETF applications.
Musk further stated that he still has a lot of Dogecoins, in the same way that SpaceX also has a lot of Bitcoins.
At Tesla, they were worried about the USD/BTC ratio when they bought Bitcoins, and said that they sold these Bitcoins because of their capital needs.
“At some point we had concerns about the energy use of Bitcoin. The use of coal as an energy source by mining facilities in China was a cause of concern for us. This situation has improved since then, but I still have some concerns,” he said.
He added that Bitcoin is similar to gold, but not enough for payments.
The US securities regulator (SEC) approved the first US-listed exchange traded funds (ETFs) to track bitcoin, in a watershed for the world’s largest cryptocurrency and the broader crypto industry.
The announcement came at the end of a tumultuous 24 hours for the popular cryptocurrency, when a tweet was sent from the SEC account announcing the approval of the long-awaited ETFs. This lead the price of bitcoin to spike by more than $1,000. Soon after, the SEC said its account had been “compromised” and that the tweet was “unauthorised”.
As per the announcement, SEC has approved 11 applications, including from BlackRock, Ark Investments/21Shares, Fidelity, Invesco and VanEck among others.
Some products are expected to begin trading as early as Thursday, kicking off a fierce competition for market share.
While approving the new ETFs, the SEC said it was still deeply skeptical about cryptocurrencies. The decision did not mean it approves or endorses bitcoin.
“Investors should remain cautious about the myriad risks associated with bitcoin and products whose value is tied to crypto,” said Gary Gensler, the agency’s chairman.