Bitcoin soars 14% after Elon Musk namecheck on Twitter

Image: Reuters

Bitcoin jumped as much as 14% on Friday, 29 January, to a two-week high after Tesla Inc chief Elon Musk tagged the cryptocurrency in his Twitter biography.

Musk wrote simply "#bitcoin" in his biography on the social media site. The cryptocurrency was trading at $37,800 as of 0936 GMT.

The billionaire entrepreneur, followed by 43.7 million on Twitter, has a record of making market-moving comments on the site.

He later also posted a twet that read, "In retrospect, it was inevitable."

In retrospect, it was inevitable

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 29, 2021

GameStop Corp , which has been at the centre of retail trading frenzy, surged 50% on Tuesday after Musk tweeted "Gamestonk!!", along with a link to the Reddit Wallstreetbets stock trading discussion group.

There, supporters affectionately refer to him as "Papa Musk." "Stonks" is a tongue-in-cheek term for stocks widely used on social media.

In December, Musk asked about the possibility of converting "large transactions" of Tesla's balance sheet into bitcoin, in a Twitter exchange with a well-known advocate for the digital currency.