Elon Musk says governments should not have a hand on crypto

We are no longer strangers to Elon Musk’s love-hate relationship with Bitcoin and of late, he is leaning towards the love. The Techno titan and Tesla CEO and SpaceX Chief Engineer was quoted saying in last week’s Code 2021 event in Beverly Hills that,

“It is not possible to, I think, destroy crypto, but it is possible for governments to slow down its advancement,”

This is a statement that followed an earlier answer to an intriguing question on whether or not governments should regulate crypto through the interference of their blockchains, to which he says:

“I would say, [governments should] ‘Do nothing.’”

Musk went on record to say that he thinks that digital assets have already grown too huge and had already spread too far for any central government to actually have a hand on it. He recognized that the adoption of cryptocurrency had grown rapidly, faster than previous technological advancements. In a report on Bitcoin’s growth, former Google employee, Michael Levin used the crypto’s 12-year existence as a baseline to project that it gain 1 billion users more within the next 4 years from its current 135 million users.

According to data from the second annual Global Crypto Adoption Index, a report published by software firm, Chainalysis, the adoption of the digital asset in 2020 spiked to 881% compared to the year before. The company found that the top 5 countries that accepted cryptocurrency are Vietnam, India, Pakistan, Ukraine, and Kenya.

Back to Musk, he acknowledged that the cryptocurrencies have not found the favor of governments as the blockchains might undermine the governments’ ability to control banking due to its endemic qualities.

“I suppose cryptocurrency is fundamentally aimed at reducing the power of a centralized government. They don’t like that,” Musk said.