Elon Musk and Tesla just bought $1.5 billion in Bitcoin.

Holy crap.

Bitcoin’s price soared to record highs of $48,000 and is currently sitting around $46,283. This, however, means a lot more than crazy short-term gains.

Elon Musk just started the end game.
He put 15% of Tesla’s cash reserve into crypto.

This move will ignite a domino effect. More companies are going to start adding Bitcoin to their portfolio and cryptocurrency will reach wider mainstream appeal.

“One by one, corporations will add Bitcoin to their balance sheets and it couldn’t get bigger than Tesla,” said Vijay Ayyar, head of Asia Pacific at cryptocurrency exchange Luno in Singapore. “Imagine if 100 companies start putting even 1% into Bitcoin, what that is going to do to demand and supply.”

What you should know

In order to understand Bitcoin's meteoric rise this year, you have to understand “purchasing power.” Purchasing power is the amount of goods or services you can buy with your money. It’s important to understand this concept because inflation is constantly decreasing your purchasing power.

This is why putting your money into a savings account could be doing you more harm than good. The average savings account in the US has an interest rate of .06%, according to data from the FDIC. Meanwhile, the inflation rate is around 2.2% according to recent data.

Although my fellow editor

Cody Collins did remind me of a Warren Buffet quote, “never bet against America;” it’s still important to note that the US did just print 24% of all US dollars ever created last year alone.

If your money is sitting around in a checking or savings account it is slowly burning. For the average person, this is hundreds of dollars a year. For a Fortune 500 company like Tesla, however, this is millions of dollars turned to ashes.

Enter Bitcoin, a deflationary currency where only 21 million will ever be created. No money printing. No unpredictable inflation rates. And monster returns year after year.

Not everyone is convinced

Did you ever watch that movie “The Big Short?” It’s a really great film; I highly recommend it if you want to understand the 2008 housing market crisis.

In the flick, Christian Bale plays a financial genius named Michael Burry who in real life actually predicted the housing market crisis in the early 2000s and placed bets against it, or shorted it. His bet paid off when the entire economy collapsed a few years later.

Burry still offers financial advice from time to time and isn’t convinced that Bitcoin’s massive growth isn’t just another bubble ready to burst. Furthermore, he thinks Elon’s $1.5 billion bet was a distraction from Tesla’s regulatory issues in China.

“Chinese regulators summon Tesla on quality issues as consumers complain about quality … but $TSLA bought $BTC,” Burry said in a series of now-deleted Tweets. “In my mind’s eye, so much #digitalconfetti.”

He added, “We are in a blow-off top in all things,” referring to a chart pattern that shows a steep increase in an asset’s price and trading volume, followed by a rapid price decline. “Markets have now bubbled over in a dangerous way.”

Burry even linked to Led Zeppelin's song “When The Levee Breaks.”

Here’s what might happen next

Bitcoin is a speculative asset, meaning hardly anyone uses it for purchases or to trade. Data from New York-based blockchain researcher Chainalysis Inc. showed that only 1.3% of economic transactions came from merchants in the first four months of 2019.

Right now, cryptocurrency's value comes from speculation the same way they do for stocks. This also means that Burry’s speculation is just as valid as Musk’s bullish bet on Bitcoin.

One thing is for sure, however, if more mainstream adoption happens — if Elon really did push down the domino that will keep toppling others — then Bitcoin is going to snowball until it’s too big to burst.

There will be pullbacks following all this hype, but I’m more interested to see what financial institution or company will support Bitcoin next (Hey there Apple and Facebook).