Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks during the unveiling of the new Tesla Model Y in Hawthorne, California on March 14, 2019. (Photo by Frederic J. BROWN / AFP) (Photo credit should read FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images)
On Monday, Elon Musk who runs the electric car company Tesla announced that it had bought $1.5 Billion Bitcoin and would begin accepting payments in Bitcoin as well, setting off a frenzy of interest. The fact that it cannot be controlled by a government or a company has made investors more interested in it over time. The software which sets the rule for Bitcoin also allows only 21 million Bitcoin to be ever created, so it was a scarce resource and since the pandemic a whole new set of powerful investors and companies have entered the the market. There are anew generation of investors who had a lot of time during the pandemic and have found a few attractive options to spend them now.
As Meltem Demirors said that this is just a sea change in sentiment. Being the chief strategy officer at CoinShares, a cryptocurrency asset manager he also added ” We went from being mocked and ridiculed to having the richest man in the world talking about it”.
Cryptocurrencies only started appearing after Satoshi Nakamoto- whose real identity has never been revealed released the rules and software for Bitcoin in 2009. Bitcoin is a virtual currency with no physical backing and can be sent to anyone and anywhere in the World. When it comes to Bitcoin a decentralized network of computers keeps track of all the transactions which is why it cannot be controlled by the a government or a company.