Crypto Influencers Tried to Explain Bitcoin to Harry Potter Creator JK Rowling

UTC by Andy Watson · 3 min read
Crypto Influencers Tried to Explain Bitcoin to Harry Potter Creator JK Rowling
Photo: J. K. Rowling

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, and Justin Sun, the CEO of Tron Foundation, tried to explain to Harry Potter creator JK Rowling what Bitcoin is and how it can be used.

How do you explain Bitcoin to someone who doesn’t have an idea what the cryptocurrency is? This was exactly what many tried to do when JK Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series asked Twitter users to explain Bitcoin to her.

There were hundreds of tweets in response to her question that she ended up more flustered.

Among the many blockchain enthusiasts that attempted to help her understand Bitcoin were Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, and Justin Sun, the CEO of Tron Foundation.

What Buterin Says about Bitcoin

Buterin in his tweet defined BTC as a digital asset that is not backed by anything unlike fiat issued by central banks such as the U.S. Treasury Department.

He further stated that Bitcoin is protected by a network of computers that are decentralized making it impossible for a single entity to influence it.

According to Buterin, anyone could join this network which collectively keeps a record of and updates the volume of bitcoins held by users. This he said totaled 18 million units.

 Elon Musk’s Tweet

In his in response to Rowling’s question, Elon Musk, the Tesla CEO wrote that the digital currency is “pretty much” a big deal due to the action of central banks which have been propping up fiat in the wake of economic uncertainties due to the coronavirus pandemic. He said that in comparison to central bank-issued currencies, Bitcoin is “solid”.

Rowling Left Even More Confused with Bitcoin

It wasn’t as if the deluge of explanations made sense to Rowling who in a follow-up tweet said so. She reiterated that despite the clarifications that she was still at a loss understanding how the digital currency could be “collectibles” alluding to the fact that she ended up more confused than she was when she made the original tweet:

In his own contribution, Justin Sun, the Tron founder and CEO responded directly to Elon Musk with a joke that he had assumed Bitcoin was the currency of Mars. Musk doubles as the CEO of SpaceX, a space exploration company that plans to make space tourism cheaper.

Justin Sun’s Gift to Warren Buffett

Sun had in February countered a statement by billionaire businessman Warren Buffett that he owned no cryptocurrency. Buffett, in a February 24 interview, said:

“I don’t own any cryptocurrency. I never will […] You can’t do anything with it except sell it to somebody else.”

However, barely 24 hours later, Justin Sun announced that he had earlier gifted Buffet some digital currencies. He maintained that data from the blockchain shows that Mr. Buffet never moved the coins.

Sun concluded that since the funds were still intact, Buffett’s claim was not tenable. He added that transparency is one of the merits of the distributed ledger technology on which Bitcoin was built.

Bitcoin News, Cryptocurrency News, News
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