Elon Musk’s statements about Bitcoin’s connections to energy and physics that went viral show that he has changed his mind about Bitcoin. Elon Musk’s big plans to cut down on wasteful expenditure and inefficiencies in the US federal government may have failed, but they may have been what made him change his mind about Bitcoin.
After saying that Bitcoin would replace fiat money because it is connected to physical energy, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX became famous on social media. Musk said this when talking to Indian businessman Nikhil Kamath:
“Energy is the real money.” That’s why I say Bitcoin is powered by energy.
You can’t make laws around energy. You can’t just make legislation and get a lot of energy right away. Musk remarked that it is very hard to produce energy, and even harder to use it effectively for productive work.
Of course, Bitcoin fans and professionals in the field shared the viral video a lot. This is also one of the first occasions Musk has talked about Bitcoin in public in a long time. He then told Kamath that society may move away from the current system of fiat money.
Elon went back to Bitcoin when DOGE failed.
Chain Reaction shows that Musk’s pointless attempts to help the Trump administration deal with too much government spending had changed the way he thinks about the financial system.
“Elon has been on a journey because he started out really believing that it was possible to cut government spending in a fiat-based economy.” Batten stated, “He had to run that experiment, set up DOGE, and let it fail.”
Batten claimed that Musk’s attempts to persuade the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to help fix the US’s growing debt crisis turned out to be an experiment that showed him how fiat monetary policy really works.
“He knows that it is not possible to stop the government from spending money. If you can print as much money as you want, you need something that separates money from the ability to print as much money as you want.
Batten said that Musk’s background in physics makes him think that he is starting to understand that monetary systems backed by energy are essentially resistant to inflation.
“Because he studied physics, he plainly knows that energy isn’t something you can print into existence. That’s a better method to make sound money in the long run. So little by little, he’s coming to the idea that Bitcoin is it.
Changing Perspectives on Bitcoin Mining
People are finally starting to see Bitcoin mining in a new light. Batten also talked about how people’s views on the environmental effects of Bitcoin have changed over the past several years. During the 2010s, the mainstream media always said that Bitcoin’s energy use was very detrimental for the environment.
Several academic publications and research reports, such as Cambridge’s 2024 Digital Mining Industry Report, have mostly disproven these assertions and the main story.
Batten added that years of false stories about Bitcoin’s effect on the environment have had a big effect on European lawmakers.
“They’ve made rules based on the false soundbite that Bitcoin uses a lot of energy per transaction, but it actually doesn’t.”
Batten made it clear that Bitcoin’s energy use comes from mining, not from individual transactions. He said this was “critically important to understand” because the network could theoretically handle thousands more transactions without using more energy.
As soon as you get this per-transaction metric, it signals something extremely bad: it’s not scalable since as you scale more, your energy use will also go higher. Many regulators in Europe still hold that view.