Bitcoin prices jumped nearly 5% after the eccentric Tesla billionaire’s tweet.
As the cryptocurrency market’s weeks-long rut continues, Tesla’s billionaire CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter Sunday afternoon to refute claims that he engaged in a bitcoin pump-and-dump scheme earlier this year and said the electric-vehicle company would once again invest in the world’s largest cryptocurrency once its mining operations constitute a «reasonable» amount of clean energy usage. «The volatility we have seen [in bitcoin] is an unexpected function of what I would call market manipulation by Elon Musk, and if that happened to a listed company he would be investigated and severely sanctioned by the SEC,» Wierzycka said Wednesday, likely referring to the fact that the SEC only has regulatory authority over securities—and not currencies. The SEC defines market manipulation as the «iIntentional or willful conduct designed to deceive or defraud investors by controlling or artificially affecting the price of securities.
