Elon Musk Says Cryptocurrency Promising But Exercise Caution While Investing

Elon Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO who is a key proponent in the latest surge of cryptocurrency Dogecoin, has sounded a note of caution for those who are investing or want to invest in cryptocurrency. This comes ahead of his Saturday Night Live (SNL) appearance where he is expected to talk about his support for cryptocurrency and making humanity a multi-planet species. Musk warned his 53 million social media followers against investing their life-savings into cryptocurrency via a tweet, in which he also shared a video of an interview he did with TMZ in February.

In the video, Musk says people should not invest their life savings in cryptocurrency. “That's unwise.” But he then adds that there is a good chance that crypto is the future currency of Earth, but it's not yet clear which one it is going to be. Musk does not rule out the possibility of having a multiple currency system future.

The TMZ interview from February was around the time Musk sent out a number of tweets popularising Dogecoin. The cryptocurrency began its first major rally in February this year after Musk posted a series of tweets about it. Now, it is again on a frenzied run ahead of Musk's SNL appearance.

Towards the end of the video, Musk warns again, “Like I said, don't take too much risk on crypto”. Twitter users seem to have liked the candidness of the billionaire tycoon and commented with sharp memes praising him while some others just had fun being there.

A few days ago, Musk sent out tweets seeking skit ideas for his SNL appearance, and his followers wanted him to talk about Dogecoin. That is believed to have fuelled a frenzied rise in the value of the meme currency to an all-time high over the past week.

On Saturday (at the time of writing), the value of Dogecoin stood at $0.715669 (roughly Rs 50). Created in 2013 by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, the digital currency, like Bitcoin, offers recourse to the inadequacies of traditional banking systems. It was never meant to succeed and was used and traded for a long time as a joke.