Sure, Elon Musk’s long-awaited endorsement failed to move bitcoin much, but then, he doesn’t have a three-inch tongue or batwings, does he?
In a pair of tweets in the wee morning hours, the KISS frontman tweeted out: “I’m not recommending any of this to anyone. But yes, I bought and/or will own Bitcoin, Etherium, Litecoin and others.”
Which was followed 45 minutes later by: “Not recommending any of these to anyone. But yes, I also bought Dogecoin, XRP and others. Make of it what you will.”
But, will he move the market?
Well, were not saying there was a Simmons spike but XRP—already on its way up from $0.26 thanks to Reddit’s hedge fund-killing WallStreetBets subreddit—was at about $0.41 shortly after midnight on Feb. 1, when Simmons tweeted. It then climbed to $0.74 over the next six hours, according to CoinMarketCap, before falling back to $0.42 at press time.
But BTC, ETH and LTC were all flat.
However, Dogecoin also had a bump this morning. So, at the very least, Simmons’ timing is good when it comes to altcoins.
Simmons has expressed interest in bitcoin and in cryptocurrencies in general before, reaching back to the 2017 boom when he told TheStreet that cryptocurrencies could have a place in a diversified investment portfolio.
He added—very casually—that he could be “talked into” a Kisscoin. Not that it ever happened, mind you.
More recently, he told American Songwriter in mid-January that cryptocurrency “is a game changer.” He said:
I’m in it big. I’ve done very well.”
Interestingly, he was not responding to a question about crypto, but simply what he was thinking about at the time.
Simmons also said—according to the interviewer—that he’s “deep in Bitcoin” as well as Zcash, Litecoin and “quite a few others.”
When asked why, Simmons told the publication:
“Governments, as you know now print money whenever they need it. So, inflation keeps getting bigger and bigger. The dollar used to be based on gold and you can lose a dollar. You can’t lose your crypto currency, unless, of course, you lose what’s called your ‘code wallet,’ or your password. Banks have nothing to say about it. Governments have nothing to say about it. The world is changing.”