Elon Musk’s tweets could be a form of vengeance
Tesla and SpaceX boss could be changing the fate of companies on purpose
The latest “Gamestonk” tweet made by the tech billionaire caused a surge of 157% in Gamestop’s stock price. Gamestop’s stock was shorted by Melvin Capital, however, the subreddit WallStreetBets consisting of over 2.4 million members took charge and bought up stocks of the company to pump up its price which inflicted heavy losses on Melvin Capital. And the tweet by Elon only added fuel to the rising fire and more retail investors piled up on this opportunity.
Elon Musk has a habit of getting into trouble because of his tweets. But this tweet along with a few other tweets could have been an act of vengeance against some companies or individuals. Let’s examine some of his tweets.
Gamestonk
The “Gamestonk” tweet caused a huge loss to Melvin Capital. Melvin Capital has shorted Tesla ($TSLA) since 2016 and bragged about it for years. Musk fought hard against all odds and dragged Tesla from the verge of bankruptcy to make it the highest valued automobile company of all time. It’s understandable if he held a grudge against someone who bet against his company. He may have waited for over 4 years for this revenge but a collective loss of $5bn to all hedge funds is a massive loss for wall street.
Use Signal
WhatsApp’s new updated privacy policy caused a lot of stir as it suggested it would share the data with Facebook, WhatsApp’s parent company. WhatsApp’s competitors, mainly Signal and Telegram took advantage of this situation to gain new users.
Elon tweeted “Use Signal” which caused another company named Signal Advance’s share price to spike up as investors piled on the company. However, Musk was referring to the not-for-profit messaging app as an alternative for WhatsApp. Musk responded to a comment stating he had donated to Signal a year ago and plans to give more in the future.
Signal clocked 1.2 million downloads after the tweet and WhatsApp saw a decline of 11% in terms of downloads. This may not have been a major hit for WhatsApp or Facebook, but it caused enough panic which led to a full-page advertisement in all major Indian newspapers trying to convince the masses to not leave WhatsApp.
Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg had multiple clashes over a lot of topics from artificial intelligence to rockets. However, this constant feud began in 2016 when the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket exploded destroying Facebook’s AMOS-6 satellite which was supposed to be launched into space by the rocket. After the failed launch, Zuckerberg said he was “deeply disappointed to hear that SpaceX’s launch failure destroyed our satellite that would have provided connectivity to so many entrepreneurs and everyone else across the continent.” Musk addressed the comment and the failed launch two years later in an interview. “Yeah, my fault for being an idiot,” Musk said. “We did give them a free launch to make up for it and I think they had some insurance.”
Since then, they have had a difference of opinions about almost any tech-related topic.
Facebook sucks
Elon wrote “Facebook sucks” on Twitter as a reply to Facebook’s head of AI, Jerome Pesenti’s comment who wrote that Musk has no idea what he is talking about where AI is concerned.
Musk and Zuckerberg have always been on the opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to artificial intelligence. While Zuckerberg is overly-optimistic as to how AI could change the world for the better, Musk has always been a skeptic of AI and AGI(Artificial General Intelligence). He believes AI will be “smarter than the smartest human”. And that could be dangerous for the entire humanity.
“I believe a lot of people in the AI community would be ok saying it publicly @elonmusk has no idea what he is talking about when he talks about AI. There is no such thing as AGI and we are nowhere near matching human intelligence. #noAGI,” Pesenti tweeted.
In February 2020, Musk removed the official pages of Tesla and SpaceX from Facebook saying he wasn’t aware they existed in the first place. While this didn’t have any direct financial impact on Facebook or Mark Zuckerberg, but this action did solidify his position against Facebook and Mark.
I kinda love Etsy
While this isn’t a diss by Elon on anyone, this is a worth-while mention as to how his tweets could skyrocket the stock price of any company. The billionaire tweeted “I kinda love Etsy” which caused a jump in the company’s stock price by 9% and hit an intraday record, according to Bloomberg.
Etsy replied to Musk’s tweet “@elonmusk we love you to Mars and back.”
Elon may fit the profile of the eccentric billionaire but his words do have a lot of influence in the stock market as well as in the real-world and his 43 million followers definitely worship him for that.
