Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he isn’t encouraging anyone to go heavily in on crypto, even dogecoin — despite his rampant love for the token.
“I’m not advising anyone to buy crypto or bet the farm on Dogecoin,” said Musk, speaking virtually at The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit in London, according to the WSJ.
Musk has had a long relationship with dogecoin, having promoted it on Saturday Night Live, bought it for his son and even offered to work with its developers to make it more suitable for wider adoption. He even followed through with his commitment to temporarily turn the Twitter logo into a dogecoin image after buying the company.
In the conference, he also explained why he was such a fan. “Dogecoin is my favorite cryptocurrency because it has the best humor and has dogs,” he added.
Last week, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao expressed surprise that dogecoin had not yet faded away and said Musk might have played a role in extending the memecoin’s lifespan.
Musk’s cautious advice may be in light of his particular influence on the market. In 2018, he paid a $20 million penalty to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for making a weed joke about Tesla’s stock price and inadvertently pumping it by 6%.
Musk’s comments come as the cryptocurrency market is facing a sell-off. Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, has lost more than 50% of its value since its all-time high in November 2021. Other cryptocurrencies have fared even worse, with some losing more than 90% of their value.
The sell-off has been driven by a number of factors, including rising interest rates, inflation, and the ongoing war in Ukraine. However, some analysts believe that Musk’s comments may also be playing a role.
“Musk’s comments are likely to further dampen sentiment in the cryptocurrency market,” said Edward Moya, senior market analyst at Oanda. “He is one of the most influential people in the space, and his words carry a lot of weight.”
Moya added that the sell-off in the cryptocurrency market is likely to continue in the near term. “We are likely to see more volatility in the market as investors continue to assess the risks,” he said.
