Tesla CEO Elon Musk Slams Bitcoin But Praises Satoshi Nakamoto

Elon Musk may have built businesses around technology, such as driverless electric-powered cars, an online bank, spacecraft, but one thing Musk is not particularly fond of is Bitcoin.

Musk sat down with the "Third Row Tesla Podcast" crew on Monday and talked about all things Elon in a two-hour-long session that covers only one part in perhaps a series of episodes. An hour and a half into the conversation, Musk was asked about Bitcoin and why he isn't too bullish on the first decentralized digital currency.

Musk said that he isn't here nor there on Bitcoin, which is roughly the same stance that the Tesla CEO has had about the first crypto ever since its inception. He also joked about Bitcoin recently in a tweet, saying that Bitcoin is not his safeword.

But when it comes to BTC's structure, he said in the past that it was "quite brilliant," and that's synonymous with his response when asked in the podcast about what he thought of the white paper authored by Satoshi Nakamoto.

It is worth noting that Musk was also suspected to be Nakamoto or at least the creator of Bitcoin. One former intern for Space X, Sahil Gupta, posted his arguments in a Hacker Noon post back in 2017 on why he thinks Musk is the Bitcoin inventor. Gupta cited Musk's understanding of economics and cryptography, as well as his mastery of the C++ coding, as reasons that qualify him to be the author of the Bitcoin 2008 paper.

But when it comes to becoming the world's reserve currency, Musk had this to say, "Where I see crypto as is effectively a replacement for cash."

"But not as a replacement for a primary — I do not see crypto being the primary database," he continued.

Musk also said that transactions in crypto are sometimes "not in the balance of the law" and serves as the bridge for illegal to legal transactions.

Musk ended his comments about the crypto with a reconciling statement, saying, "This is sometimes taken as being like I'm being judgmental about crypto, but it's actually — there are a lot of things that are illegal that shouldn't be illegal."

"I think sometimes governments have too many laws. They shouldn't have so many things that are illegal," he explained.