Elon Musk Changes Twitter Bio To Bitcoin, Boosts BTC Price By Almost 20%

Bitcoin surged by over $5,000 after Elon Musk changed his Twitter bio Friday to simply say "#bitcoin."

Around the same time he made the change to his Twitter bio, the Tesla and SpaceX founder also tweeted: “In retrospect, it was inevitable.”

Bitcoin, initially expected to trade around $32,000 in the next few days, immediately jumped by $1,000 around 10 minutes after Musk’s tweet. After the tweet got out a bit more, Bitcoin increased from $33,000 to $38,000 in under one hour, before retracing to trade around $36,500.

Musk's Bitcoin tweet came after his criticism of hedge fund managers shorting stocks and the claims that Wall Street is coercing brokerage services to limit retail trading of the GameStop stock.

Robinhood, one of the brokerages that limited trading, said it is planning to lift the restrictions Friday, Forbes reported.

The restriction has forced some investors to trade cryptocurrency, the markets for which are open 24 hours a day. One of the cryptocurrencies -- Dogecoin -- has increased by 975%. Musk has tweeted about Dogecoin many times, and the latest of such posts may have had a hand in the cryptocurrency’s price increase Friday.

Musk also spoke about Bitcoin multiple times in 2020. On Dec. 20, the billionaire tweeted a picture that indicated he was trying to focus but was being distracted and tempted by Bitcoin.

In the same tweet, Michael Saylor, the CEO of MicroStrategy, a public company that has put Bitcoin in its treasury, told Musk to do his shareholders a $100 billion favor by converting the Tesla balance sheet into Bitcoin.

“Are such large transactions possible?” Musk asked Saylor, who replied that it is possible since he has done it himself. Musk said in a later tweet that Bitcoin is his safeword.

After Dogecoin and Bitcoin prices went up in the past 24 hours following Musk’s tweets, many on Twitter advocated turning on their notifications of the billionaire’s tweets so they can act on what he says.