Bitcoin is ‘brilliant, much better’ than paper money, but no use for Tesla – Elon Musk

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that despite the advantages and “brilliant” structure of the world’s most popular cryptocurrency, his electric car company apparently has no plans to get involved with bitcoin.

Musk, who was once in hot water over a bitcoin-related tweet, touched upon the crypto topic as the discussion steered away from Tesla in an interview for ARK Invest’s podcast, released on Tuesday.

“Paper money is going away and cryptocurrency is a far better way to transfer value than pieces of paper,” Musk told hosts Tasha Keeney and Cathie Wood, adding that despite its ability to bypass currency controls, it still has some downsides.

Bitcoin is quite “energy intensive” as people have to use powerful computers to create a new token. At the same time Tesla is not going to jump on the bandwagon and has no plans for bitcoin, according to the CEO.

“Bitcoin’s structure is brilliant but I don’t think it would be a good use of Tesla’s resources to get involved in crypto,” Tesla founder said.

Musk earlier admitted that he has small cryptocurrency holdings, some .25 BTC, gifted by a friend “many years ago.”

In October last year, the billionaire’s Twitter account was suspended after he asked one of his followers if they’d like to buy some bitcoin. Musk explained he was “just joking” at the time and the account was blocked as there was “some automatic rule that if you try to sell Bitcoin or something.”

The tweet came shortly after some impersonators staged a crypto giveaway scam via a verified Twitter account masquerading as Musk.

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