Bitcoin Reaches New Record After Elon Musk Defends It

Bitcoin reached a new all-time high of $52,927 after Elon Musk tweeted in support of the cryptocurrency on February 19.

Tesla’s chief executive officer, Elon Musk, called investing in Bitcoin is a “less dumb form of liquidity than cash” after the electric carmaker Tesla bought $1.5bn (£1.07bn) of the cryptocurrency.

Musk’s posts were in response to remarks by Binance Holdings Ltd.’s chief Changpeng Zhao. In a Bloomberg Television interview. Zhao wondered why Tesla bought Bitcoin if he’s so “gung-ho” on Dogecoin.

READ MORE: Bitcoin Set To Be A $1 Trillion Asset

“To be clear, I am not an investor, I am an engineer,” he said on Twitter. "I don’t even own any publicly traded stock besides Tesla.”

He added: “However, when fiat currency has a negative real interest, only a fool wouldn’t look elsewhere. Bitcoin is almost as bs as fiat money. The keyword is “almost”.

Musk further defended Tesla’s move by saying Bitcoin is “adventurous enough for an S&P 500 company.”

Bitcoin, the world's largest cryptocurrency, has been up 80 percent year-to-date, and now has a market cap of over $984 billion according to data from coinmarketcap.com.