“Nothing is off limits” declared the teaser for Bitcoin As a Tool for Economic Empowerment, a panel discussion between Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX; Jack Dorsey, CEO of Square and Twitter; and Cathie Wood, CEO of Ark Invest, at The B Word conference from the Crypto Council for Innovation. But one thing was off limits: Tough questions from the moderator, Steve Lee, project manager at Square Crypto, and thus Dorsey’s employee.
Nevertheless, Wednesday’s panel did live up to some of its advertised heat when Musk challenged Dorsey’s dedication to crypto by asking: “What about letting Twitter advertisers pay in crypto?” The question came toward the end of the panel, after Dorsey had put his all his verbal support behind the currency, and Musk had more or less followed, with a bit of hedging.
But it was nothing like the hedging of Dorsey, who deflected. When Lee attempted to step in, Musk said, “I was asking Jack if he was going to do it.” Dorsey let out a short laugh in response, and the general lovefest for Bitcoin moved on.
The panel was mostly focused on cheering on Bitcoin and coming up with ways to overcome hesitancy on the part of the public, institutions, and maybe even Musk.
Tesla’s CEO has had a checkered history with cryptocurrency, sometimes sending out love to it on Twitter, other times posting breakup memes about it. But today, he did clarify his position, saying that he personally holds Bitcoin, Dogecoin, and Ethereum. Musk seemed to want to make clear that the consternation he causes those who hold cryptocurrency is also his (though of course none of them are, like him, the richest man in the world). “If the price of Bitcoin goes down, I lose money,” he said. “I might pump, but I don’t dump.”
Musk also addressed Tesla dropping Bitcoin as payment in light of concerns about clean energy. “It looks like Bitcoin is shifting a lot more to renewables,” he said. “I want to do a little bit more diligence to confirm that the percentage of renewable energy usage is at or above 50%, and that there is a trend toward increasing that number, and if so Tesla will resume accepting Bitcoin.”
One uniting point on the panel was support for a currency divorced from government. “Having sound money that is separate from the state is the idea,” Dorsey said. Musk agreed. “My hope for crypto in general is that it can improve the efficiency of the information system that we call money,” he said. That system is plagued by error, according to Musk. “Error is government interference or fraud.”
Cryptocurrency is a darling of technolibertarianism. But the panel did also veer into technoutopianism toward the end. When Lee asked Dorsey about his hopes for Bitcoin, Dorsey said: “My hope is that it creates world peace or helps create world peace.”
“That’s great,” Lee replied, before ending the panel.
