By Mat Di Salvo
2 min read
Elon Musk is no stranger to Twitter rants, but the billionaire tech entrepreneur really splashed out on the theatrics for his latest. Sick of flattening the curve, the 48-year-old Tesla CEO cried for freedom, Bitcoin, and complained that Tesla’s stock price was “too high imo [in my opinion].”
The electric car company’s shares immediately dropped, and have so far lost $15 billion in value. And his girlfriend, the Canadian singer due to give birth to Musk’s first child on Monday, is now “mad” at him. Oh, Elon!
Among the few Twitter accounts Musk spoke with during his tweetstorm was...a Twitter account for Bitcoin, which tweeted that “Bitcoin price is too low imo.” Musk responded with a laughing ehttps://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1256239815256797184moji and a picture of...anime Bitcoin.
Musk’s main gripe appears to be with the coronavirus lockdown, which he has had enough of. “Now give people back their FREEDOM”, he tweeted, before tweeting his favorite lyrics to the Star-Spangled Banner and announcing that he was “selling almost all physical possessions” and “Will own no house.”
What's Musk has previously tweeted that the “coronavirus panic is dumb” and called the US government’s measures “fascist.” Libertarians, like author Tom Woods, rallied round the inventor, lapping up his cryptic criticisms of the state.
High-profile libertarians in the crypto community have followed suit, with John McAfee and Musk agreeing that “our democracy has been hacked” and Bitcoin.com founder Roger Ver calling for an end to the lockdown.
Many consider Musk’s ill-informed commentary on the coronavirus dangerous. In March, he tweeted a link to a paper that pushed the drug, chloroquine, as a cure to the coronavirus pandemic. The paper was authored by two Bitcoin fans, James Todaro, managing partner at Blocktown Capital, and Gregory Rigano, lawyer and inventor of blockchain platform IKU.
This annoyed people, since the Bitcoin entrepreneurs “haven’t done any original research, but instead have strung together lengthy quotes from other scientists, who have done very limited research,” tweeted Joan Donovan, a Shorenstein Center social media researcher.
Musk has landed himself in trouble over what he says on Twitter before, and last year agreed that lawyers would pre-approve written communications—including tweets—about Tesla.
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