Elon Musk says Bitcoin prices 'seem high' after record week

New York

BITCOIN surged to another record on Saturday after reaching more than US$1 trillion in market value for the first time, leaving some of its biggest backers in a state of wonderment.

In a tweet, Elon Musk said Bitcoin prices "seem high". The world's richest person was replying to Peter Schiff - a crypto sceptic and gold bug - who said the precious metal is better than Bitcoin and fiat money.

"Money is just data that allows us to avoid the inconvenience of barter," Mr Musk tweeted. "That data, like all data, is subject to latency & error." In a following post, he added, "that said, BTC & ETH do seem high lol".

Mr Musk earlier called Bitcoin a "less dumb" version of cash. The largest cryptocurrency rose as much as 3.4 per cent to a record high of US$57,527 on Saturday before paring gains to US$57,040 at 1.26pm in New York. It has surged 56 per cent since the end of January and more than quadrupled last year. For several years after its debut more than a decade ago, Bitcoin traded for just a few cents.

Crypto believers are duelling with sceptics for the dominant narrative around the climb: the former see an asset being embraced for its ability to hedge risks such as inflation, while the latter sense a precarious mania riding atop waves of monetary and fiscal stimulus.

GET BT IN YOUR INBOX DAILY

Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox.

Sign UpVIEW ALL

Mr Musk gave impetus to Bitcoin joining the mainstream when Tesla said it invested US$1.5 billion and was prepared to begin accepting the cryptocurrency as a form of payment for its cars. According to Dan Ives at Wedbush Securities, Tesla has made a profit of about US$1 billion over the past month from that bet.

"To put this in perspective, Tesla is on a trajectory to make more from its Bitcoin investments than profits from selling its EV cars in all of 2020," Mr Ives wrote in a note on Saturday.

Traditional finance officials who have seen little value in the digital currency see the surge as part of a larger speculative bubble. Howard Lutnick, chief executive officer of Cantor Fitzgerald, said the dramatic rise in values of Bitcoin and Tesla was driven by retail investors in much the same manner that led to last month's surge in GameStop shares. Tesla gained more than 700 per cent last year.

"With all due respect: What's Tesla been? Why was Tesla up?" Mr Lutnick said last Friday on Bloomberg TV. "It's because retail kept buying it. Why is Bitcoin where it is? Because retail keeps buying it. This is just another form of the same thing. GameStop was Bitcoin and Tesla."

Still, investors haven't failed to notice the outperformance compared with traditional assets. The Bloom-berg Galaxy Crypto Index has towered over the returns of stocks, gold, commodities and bonds so far this year.

Advocates such as former hedge fund manger and Galaxy Digital founder Mike Novogratz are seeking to position themselves for even bigger gains. "Crypto is being institutionalised at an accelerating rate," Novogratz told Bloomberg. "It's all part of this accelerating evolution of being a store of value." BLOOMBERG