Elon Musk, The World’s Richest Man, Wants To Be Paid In Bitcoin

Elon Musk, the billionaire chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX who’s known to be a fan of bitcoin, recently became the world’s richest person. GETTY IMAGES

Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of Tesla TSLA +7.8% and SpaceX and who has just become the world’s richest man, has said he would never turn down being paid in the soaring cryptocurrency bitcoin.

Responding to a tweet by Ben Mezrich, the author behind the movie The Social Network and writer of Bitcoin Billionaires, that read “I’m never turning down getting paid in bitcoin again,” Musk replied: “Me neither.”

Musk, who’s ridden Tesla’s soaring share price to the top of the world’s rich lists over the last year, is known to be a fan of bitcoin, regularly tweeting about it and other cryptocurrencies (though often in a tongue-in-cheek way).

With the bitcoin price reaching never-before-seen highs over the last month, bitcoin and similar digital currencies have returned to the forefront of global consciousness for the first time since bitcoin’s 2017 boom and subsequent bust.

The value of the combined bitcoin and cryptocurrency market has now surged to over $1 trillion. The bitcoin price smashed through $40,000 per bitcoin this week, with the total value of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency passing $750 billion—and pushing bitcoin up the charts of largest global assets.

The bitcoin price, after suffering through a three-year bear market, began to rally in October—breaking into fresh territory last month as a wave of big-name investors named bitcoin as a potential hedge against inflation.

The bitcoin price has soared far past its 2017 high of around $20,000 over the last month, helped by attention from big-name investors and the likes of Elon Musk. COINBASE

In December, Musk sparked wild speculation his electric car company could add bitcoin to its balance sheet during a public exchange on Twitter.

Musk, responding to the chief executive of MicroStrategy MSTR -0.8%  MSTR -0.8%, a business intelligence company that has attracted significant attention in recent months by buying over $1 billion worth of bitcoin, asked whether it was possible to convert billions of Tesla’s dollars to bitcoin.

A week later, Musk, who wants to make a manned mission to Mars a reality in just a few short years, tweeted a future Mars economy could be based on cryptocurrency, such as bitcoin.

Read more: www.forbes.com