Afterward a long and cryptic series of tweets on Bitcoin (BTC), SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk elaborated his stance on cryptocurrencies in a Jan. 20 podcast. Noting that he'south "neither here nor there on Bitcoin," Musk focused on its use for illegal transactions.

The billionaire has recently been in the spotlight for several short and ambiguous tweets related to cryptocurrency. On Jan. x he published a tweet proverb "Bitcoin is *non* my safe word."

This follows an as cryptic tweet from April 2022, proverb "Cryptocurrency is my prophylactic discussion."

Merely while they were mostly considered to be jokes, especially in low-cal of previous tweets where he pledged to take "Tesla private at $420," Musk'south early history is deeply tied to the financial technology industry.

In 1999, Elon Musk founded Ten.com, an online bank that through later mergers became PayPal. He mentioned the company in the podcast, noting:

"If PayPal had executed the program that I wanted to execute on, I think it would probably be the well-nigh valuable company in the earth."

The interviewers then asked what Musk thought well-nigh Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, given their spiritual similarity to Ten.com. Musk replied that he's "neither here nor there on Bitcoin."

While referring to Satoshi's white paper as "pretty clever," he prefaced past proverb that his stance on cryptocurrencies "gets the crypto people aroused." He continued:

"In that location are transactions that are not within the premises of the law — there are obviously many laws in different countries — and normally cash is used for these transactions. But in lodge for illegal transactions to occur, the greenbacks must also exist used for legal transactions. You lot need an illegal-to-legal bridge. That'due south where crypto comes in."

Musk noted that cash is increasingly harder to use, just any culling would have to be usable for both legal and illegal purposes, as "it doesn't count otherwise."

Even though he may not exist entirely sold on cryptocurrencies, Musk sees a clear purpose for them:

"You must take a legal to illegal span. So where I see crypto is effectively as a replacement for cash. I do not encounter crypto being the main database [for transactions]."

Despite the negative connotation from being used for illegal purposes, he emphasized that he's not being "judgmental nigh crypto." In Musk'due south view, the governments overreach in sure aspects:

"I think there's a lot of things that are illegal that shouldn't be illegal. I remember that sometimes governments just take as well many laws about the missions that they should have, and shouldn't have and then many things that are illegal."

While not a full endorsement, Musk is not exactly contrary to cryptocurrencies. In an earlier part of the interview, he said that "banks are in trouble" — though he primarily referred to competitors such as Stripe.