Crypto Assets Total Market Cap Falls Below $2 Trillion, Musk Once Again Becomes "Public Enemy"

At 2:48 AM on May 17 (HKT), in response to cryptocurrency analyst Crypto Whale's tweet stating "Next quarter, Bitcoin investors will be surprised when they discover Tesla has sold its Bitcoin assets," Musk provocatively replied with "Indeed."

Just a few minutes earlier, Musk had criticized Bitcoin's excessively concentrated hash power. Affected by this, OKX market data showed Bitcoin prices flash-crashed again, dropping to a low of $42,123.6, the first time since February 8, representing a 15.41% decline from the May 16 high of $49,797.8.

Impacted by Bitcoin's decline, the cryptocurrency market continued its downtrend, with total market cap falling from $2.488 trillion on May 12 to briefly dropping below $2 trillion, shrinking nearly 20%. The second-ranked cryptocurrency Ethereum repeatedly lost the $3,300 level, despite facing numerous positive factors such as "comprehensive financial ecosystem development, upcoming EIP-1559 implementation, difficulty bomb delayed to December for Shanghai upgrade and year-end PoS transition." Clearly, if Bitcoin cannot stabilize within a price range, even if some altcoins show strength, they still lack sustained momentum for independent trends.

However, in the afternoon, events took a turn as Musk tweeted: "To clarify, Tesla has not sold Bitcoin." Whether Tesla actually sold coins or not—this "Rashomon" scenario will likely need Q2 financial reports to confirm, meaning Musk's "performance" will continue.

Tesla May Have Sold Bitcoin, Musk: No, I Didn't Sell

Over the past 7 days, Bitcoin's total market cap dropped from $1.1103 trillion to $847 billion, with asset scale shrinking 23.71%, and all this was triggered by just a few tweets from Musk.

On May 13, Musk suspended Tesla's acceptance of Bitcoin payments, reasoning that Bitcoin is "not environmentally friendly." Bitcoin lost the $50,000 threshold, dropping over 13% at one point. However, at that time, Musk's words seemed to leave some room, stating Tesla would not sell its Bitcoin, and he still firmly believed in cryptocurrency, just hoping Bitcoin would quickly transition to using sustainable energy, at which point Tesla would resume Bitcoin trading.

Unexpectedly, just 4 days later, Musk suddenly "flip-flopped," not only criticizing Bitcoin again on Twitter for being too centralized (hash power controlled by a few large mining companies), attacking cryptocurrency "experts" saying he better understood how money works, but also暗示ing Tesla had already sold Bitcoin. Based on this, Bitcoin, already weakly rebounding, started dropping again, reaching as low as $42,123.6, with 24-hour drops exceeding 13.70% at one point, matching the severity of May 13.

Then in the afternoon, Musk tweeted again stating, "To clarify, Tesla didn't sell Bitcoin," thoroughly "playing" the industry insiders.

Deliberately manipulating markets in short timeframes severely damaged Musk's image, with industry assessments shifting from "cryptocurrency's friend" to "publicly despised enemy." Many industry figures angrily stated on social platforms, "Resolutely boycott Tesla!" "'Silicon Valley Iron Man' filter shattered." Though containing self-mockery, this reflected everyone's anger and helplessness. Actually, reviewing history, Musk's capriciousness and "making trouble regardless of consequences" personality has always existed.

In 2014, at a summit when asked about his views on Bitcoin, Musk said Bitcoin might be a good thing, but immediately added "it's mainly used for illegal trading." In May 2020, Musk replied to Harry Potter author JK Rowling, stating the Federal Reserve and European Central Bank's actions made Bitcoin look more reliable.

On December 20, 2020, Musk called Bitcoin his "safe word," but shortly clarified saying "just kidding, surely no one actually needs a safe word?" On the same day, Musk asked MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor about the feasibility of converting Tesla's balance sheet "large transactions" to Bitcoin, exciting the crypto market considerably, with people guessing this greatly increased Tesla's likelihood of purchasing Bitcoin.

One month later, on January 29, 2021, Musk suddenly changed his Twitter bio to "Bitcoin," with Bitcoin rising 16.28% that day, opening at $31,936.0 and closing at $37,129.9. In February, Musk stated in an interview he knew about Bitcoin back in 2013 and regretted not buying it when Bitcoin prices were under $1,000. The same month, Musk confirmed he, like tens of millions of others, was a loyal Bitcoin fan. Tesla announced purchasing $1.5 billion in Bitcoin, with Bitcoin's daily gain reaching 15.22%. Bitcoin then rose continuously, breaking through $64,000 at its peak, setting a historical record.

However, on April 27, Tesla's CFO stated Tesla sold part of its $1.5 billion Bitcoin holdings in Q1, contributing $101 million in profit for the quarter, an amount close to one-quarter of Tesla's total quarterly profit.

Feeling deceived, cryptocurrency world figures swarmed to Musk's Twitter, where he "innocently stated" Tesla selling Bitcoin had nothing to do with him, his own Bitcoin portion wasn't sold, and Tesla did this essentially to prove Bitcoin's excellent liquidity, which can replace cash on balance sheets. This reasoning seemingly laid the groundwork for Musk's current repetitiveness.

Cryptocurrency World Becomes Musk's "Cash Withdrawal Machine"?

"Active like a fake account" was previously used to evaluate former US President Trump and Tesla CEO Musk. Media once统计d Musk's tweets from June 2010 to June 18, 2020, including replies, totaling 11,394 tweets (deleted tweets not counted), averaging 5.9 tweets daily.

In late 2018, Musk proudly stated in an interview with US TV news magazine "60 Minutes": "You use hairstyles to express personality, while I use Twitter."

As someone who only gradually became active in the cryptocurrency world starting December 2020, Musk's ability to turn the cryptocurrency world upside down using Twitter was clearly not developed here. Previously, Musk had multiple experiences initiating舆论wars.

Those familiar with Musk should know he owns two super enterprises—Tesla and SpaceX. In just 18 years of entrepreneurship, Tesla grew from a startup electric vehicle company to the world's #1 automaker with $5.688 billion market cap. As a private company, SpaceX not only repeatedly won NASA contracts exceeding $1 billion, but also achieved the epoch-making first human rocket recovery and recovered rocket re-launch, thus occupying most of the commercial launch market.

High-tech enterprises, while having substantial profits, also mean "very money-burning" initially. Tesla was once one of the most shorted stocks in the US, with institutions having long-term reasons to short Tesla from perspectives of product demand, safety performance, funding gaps, or Musk facing dismissal.

On April 1, 2018, April Fool's Day, Musk tweeted "Tesla is bankrupt, completely,彻底bankrupt." Affected by this, Tesla stock immediately dropped 7%.

On August 7, 2018 (Tuesday), Musk毫无征兆地 stated on Twitter he was considering privatizing Tesla at $420 per share, stating "funding secured." The $420 per share price represented nearly 23% premium over Monday's Tesla closing price, so once this tweet was posted, Tesla stock surged, and shorting financial institutions suffered heavy losses.

But 2 weeks later, Musk stated he abandoned this plan. This result naturally caused investor dissatisfaction and lawsuits against him, while SEC simultaneously charged Musk with涉嫌 securities fraud,即his tweets about Tesla privatization funding being secured were pure fabrication,既damaging investor interests又causing market chaos. Finally, Tesla and Musk agreed to分别 pay $20 million to reach settlement.

Clearly Musk didn't learn any lessons from this. On May 1, 2020, he tweeted again, "In my opinion, Tesla stock price is too high." Immediately, Tesla stock dropped over 11%, with market cap evaporating $14 billion. One investor angrily commented below: "I think you have some serious illness? Just because of your sentence, I just lost $10,000."

Trump's "governing via Twitter," Musk's "managing company via Twitter" is also going viral, but traditional markets毕竟have many "regulations" as obstacles preventing his nature from freely放飞. At this time, the cryptocurrency market with decentralized characteristics naturally became his new "prey," and Musk started his "governing coin via Twitter" path.

Beyond Bitcoin experiencing surges and crashes under his tweets, the so-called "chosen one" Dogecoin he favored also gave many investors roller coaster-like experiences. Under Musk's rallying cries like "people's currency, future currency," "will take Dogecoin to the moon," this meme coin surged 200-fold in one year, with market cap jumping to global fifth.

While贬低 Bitcoin, Musk不忘 endorsed Dogecoin, stating he was working with Dogecoin developers on "improving system trading efficiency," with Dogecoin一度 surging 30%. But previously, when everyone thought Musk's cameo hosting of "Saturday Night Live" would be Dogecoin's mega positive, Musk called Dogecoin a "hustle," causing Dogecoin to drop over 25%. These actions truly perplex people.

Meanwhile, Musk's "double标准" behavior was resisted by Bitcoin supporters, with interesting comments like: "Bitcoin's electricity will pollute the environment, Tesla's electricity is pure electricity, Yang Yongxin wants to laugh hearing this." Some netizens pointed out while Musk promoted Dogecoin, Dogecoin holding addresses were much more concentrated than Bitcoin. Musk's reply was absolutely brilliant: "My understanding is these large address owners should be exchanges, I heard the largest wallet address belongs to Robinhood."

But netizens显然不再 bought it. One Twitter user dug up evidence claiming to determine Dogecoin's first largest address owner was Musk, and the fourth-ranked address belonged to his mother, because the largest holder's address creation time was 2019, when Musk was jokingly appointed Dogecoin CEO by netizens, and the fourth largest address creation time was this Mother's Day, probably a gift from Musk to his mom.

No coincidences make stories. Dogecoin developers stated in interviews they collaborated with Musk in 2019, and Musk proposed funding Dogecoin development, but developers politely拒绝d.

Some commentary指出, as a Bitcoin "latecomer," while Musk earned handsomely, his extreme pride clearly不甘心 to work for others' benefit, so Dogecoin became his opportunity借此 to realize his fragmentation of this market, and his releasing nature while profiting handsomely, observing human nature's testing ground,毕竟Musk's future blueprint is to go to Mars to establish a nation.

Someone once said, you might consider Musk a sci-fi weirdo or genius geek due to his sky-high imagination and不计代价 pursuing self-actualization, or think he's like your nerdy friend nearby due to his love of memes and approachability, but千万不要忘记, Musk is also a shrewd businessman who survived startup hardships with extremely变态 will and extremely jerk tactics.

毕竟, due to Musk's remarks, crypto assets total market cap一度 dropped below $2 trillion, shrinking nearly 20%. He clearly深谙 and enjoys using his influence to制造 chaos. Bitcoin meeting Musk is Bitcoin's inevitable path to mainstream status. Decades of history have repeatedly proven Bitcoin's powerful vitality and stubbornness不受个人意志左右. Satoshi Nakamoto achieved Bitcoin's decentralization, we don't need to create another "Musk god."

Disclaimer

This article may contain content related to products not applicable in your region. This article only aims to provide general information and is not responsible for any factual errors or omissions herein. This article only represents the author's personal views and does not represent OKX's views. This article无意 provides any of the following recommendations, including but not limited to: (i) investment advice or investment recommendations; (ii) offers or solicitation to purchase, sell or hold digital assets; or (iii) financial, accounting, legal or tax advice. Holding digital assets (including stablecoins) involves high risk and may fluctuate significantly or even become worthless. You should carefully consider based on your financial situation whether trading or holding digital assets is suitable for you. For questions about your specific situation, please consult your legal/tax/investment professional. Information appearing in this article (including market data and statistical information, if any) is for general reference only. Although we took all reasonable care in preparing these data and charts, we bear no responsibility for any factual errors or omissions expressed herein. © 2025 OKX. This article can be fully copied or distributed, or excerpts of 100 words or less can be used,前提是 such use is non-commercial. Any copying or distribution of the entire article must also突出说明: "Copyright © 2025 OKX, used with permission." Allowed excerpts must引用 article name and include source, such as "Article Name, [Author Name (if applicable)], © 2025 OKX." Some content may be generated or辅助 generated by artificial intelligence (AI) tools. Derivative works or other uses of this article are不允许.

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