Musk says governments should ‘do nothing’ about crypto

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has urged the US government to steer clear of attempts to regulate the crypto market.

Speaking at the Code Conference, Musk claimed that governments cannot destroy the crypto sector, but they could “slow down its advancement”.

“I would say – do nothing,” he advised.

“Just let it fly.”

When mentioning the recent crackdown on cryptocurrencies in China, the South African entrepreneur said it seemed that China simply did not love crypto.

He even suggested that China’s recent crackdown on cryptocurrencies was driven by the ruling Communist Party’s concern that the technology could undermine its power.

Last week, China’s central bank introduced tougher measures in its wider crypto crackdown, including reinforced systems to monitor crypto-related transactions.

He went on theorising that one factor could be that China is having “significant electricity generation issues” with shortages of power in many parts of the country.

However, he admitted that cryptocurrencies were generally made in order to minimize the power of central governments.

“There’s some value in crypto, but I don’t think it’s the second coming of the messiah,” he said.

“It will hopefully reduce the error and latency in legacy money systems.”

Back in February, Musk confirmed that Tesla invested $1.5 billion in Bitcoin and said the carmaker would start accepting it as payment for vehicles.

However, only three months later, Tesla made a U-turn and stopped payment in Bitcoin saying the mining process of the largest cryptocurrency is very energy-intensive.