By
Bena Ilyas
April 25th, 2024
Twitter has temporarily blocked the account of Tesla CEO Elon Musk after the latter encouraged Bitcoin trading in his tweet.
Once again the Twitter account of a well-known Tesla’s founder became a reason for fierce debates unrolling within the global community. This time Elon Musk has caught attention of the crypto-public while touching the Bitcoin theme in one of his tweets.
Tweet’s Background
It all has started with Musk confessing his deep endearment to anime, a peculiar style of animation originated from Japan. In response to his lighthearted tweet full of anime love, Musk has suddenly got a serious inquiry, asking whether Tesla’s creator is going to embed a two-factor authentication into his company’s accounts.
Wanna buy some Bitcoin? 😉😉 pic.twitter.com/9ZbBJ5fuVq
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 22, 2018
Given a widespread adoption of the two-factor authentication amidst the crypto-sphere where lots of cryptocurrency companies and exchanges such as Coinbase, Binance are actively utilizing the system for security purposes, Musk thought it is a good idea to refer to Bitcoin.
Tesla to Accept Bitcoin Payments?
For that purpose Musk has picked out a picture of Sailor Moon, the lead character from an extremely successful 1990s manga series that is still popular to this day, wearing clothes endorsing Bitcoin, in front of a Bitcoin logo. He also tagged his girlfriend Grimes in the tweet, who is a successful Canadian singer and songwriter.
The tweet has immediately started trending on social media, garnering thousands of likes and retweets within hours of being posted. Many cryptocurrency enthusiasts ask about whether Tesla would be accepting certain cryptocurrencies and others took the opportunity to advertise cryptocurrency projects that they believed in.
It did not take long until the Binance CEO had joined the discussion. Zhao Changpeng offered to buy a Tesla for cryptos, wondering whether Musk’s company will accept it. Apparently, that was an attempt to get Musk involved deeper with virtual coins.
Lol, it's spreading. I will buy a Tesla if you accept crypto… https://t.co/IgdieNZA0H
— CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) October 23, 2018
Musk’s Frozen Account
Yet, it is better not to joke about Bitcoin anywhere around Twitter, as the network remains the only one of the ‘big three’ internet players including Google and Facebook, which instigated crypto ad bans not to have reversed its decision to any extent. Both Facebook and Google, having drawn similar ire, later revealed they would relax their restrictions.
Twitter believing Musk’s account was hacked over his Bitcoin message, immediately blocked his 20 million onboarded account. It was later confirmed by Musk in a separate tweet:
Twitter thought I got hacked & locked my account haha
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 23, 2018
The Twitter concerns are rather obvious, since Musk is far from being the only celebrity whose identity has been spoofed by those seeking publicity for dubious crypto-offers. The list includes such prominents figures as President Trump, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and John McAfee.
However, despite the Twitter’s strict measures to cease crypto-advertising, company’s CEO Jack Dorsey, who also leads pro-Bitcoin payment gateway Square, has adopted a highly-bullish outlook on Bitcoin’s future, suggesting it could become the world’s “single currency” by 2028.