Elon Musk Says He Sees Cryptocurrencies as Replacement for Cash
Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, recently appeared on the Third Row Podcast Tesla podcast where he talked about Bitcoin, among many other things.
Musk believes that crypto could potentially replace cash but it wouldn't work as a replacement for databases.
"So, where I see crypto is respectively as a replacement for cash. [...] I do not see crypto being a primary database," he said.
Musk's crypto journey
The eccentric billionaire has obviously been interested in this topic for quite some time, whether he has wanted it or not. As reported by U.Today, his famous name has been routinely targeted by crypto scammers.
During his podcast interview with ARK invest, Musk called Bitcoin "quite brilliant" while claiming that crypto would be a far better option for transferring value than paper money. However, he took issue with its excessive energy consumption.
In the latest podcast, Musk said that he was "neither here nor there" on Bitcoin. He appears to be concerned about the fact that Bitcoin is used for facilitating illegal transactions.
Bitcoin's identity problem
Bitcoin adoption originally took off in 2013, with multiple high-profile merchants willing to accept it. However, due to high fees and volatility, some companies, in the likes of Steem, eventually decided to ditch BTC and have not looked back since.
While BTC proponents are pushing the store-of-value narrative, they overlook its top function as a medium of exchange. Billionaire investor Ray Dalio recently opined that BTC actually fails to fulfill both of these functions.
While such comments might play into the hands of Bitcoin Cash proponents, the Lightning Network protocol already makes BTC more scalable than its offshoot, according to Tone Vays.