In a recent tweet ,Elon Musk, Technoking of Tesla, attempted to both question the likelihood of continued inflation over the next couple of years, and soothe concerns of his followers looking for advice as it relates to dealing with inflation by stating “I still own & won’t sell my Bitcoin.”
“What are your thoughts about probable inflation rate over next few years?” Musk asked his followers.
With an inflation rate of 7.9% reported for the month of February 2022, this represents the highest levels of inflation since January, 1982. “Energy remained the biggest contributor (25.6% vs 27% in January), with gasoline prices surging 38% (40% in January),” reported the Trading Economics.
As a sentiment most would echo, the founder of Tesla encouraged his followers to pursue assets outside of cash when inflation becomes rampant. “As a general principle, for those looking for advice from this thread, it is generally better to own physical things like a home or stock in companies you think make good products, than dollars when inflation is high.”
Micheal Saylor, CEO of MicroStrategy and staunch Bitcoin advocate, responded to the inquiry on Twitter stating “USD consumer inflation will continue near all time highs, and asset inflation will run at double the rate of consumer inflation.” Parroting the notions mentioned by Musk, Saylor continued to explain that “weaker currencies will collapse, and the flight of capital from cash, debt, & value stocks to scarce property like bitcoin will intensify.”
Tesla and Musk made headlines in February of 2021 when they purchased $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin, however, the controversial CEO also made another kind of headline and faced some amount of backlash when Tesla decided to suspend payments in bitcoin later that year in June.
At that time, Musk stated “When there’s confirmation of reasonable (~50%) clean energy usage by miners with positive future trend, Tesla will resume allowing Bitcoin transactions.”