SpaceX boss Elon Musk December 1, 2020 -

Hannibal Hanschke / AP / SIPA

All it took was an emoji and a note from billionaire Elon Musk, posted on Twitter, to ignite the price of Bitcoin cryptocurrency.

On Tuesday, the multi-entrepreneur announced that he was quitting Twitter "for a while" after his statements on the social network helped fuel a stock market frenzy causing the titles of several companies to skyrocket.

"More on twitter, for a while," the South African-born entrepreneur, also founder of rocket maker SpaceX, told his nearly 45 million subscribers.

He gave no reason for his sudden decision.

Inordinate power

Last week, Musk, who has contempt for investors betting on declining stocks, got involved in the GameStop affair, a chain of video game stores whose title recently soared and is shaking hedge funds.

In a tweet, Mr. Tusk had taken off the course of this company.

A few hours later, the praise of the whimsical boss about Etsy, a site specializing in small creators, had also increased its share price.

It was not the first time that Mr. Musk's tweets had moved the markets: by mentioning bitcoin on social networks, he had raised the price of cryptocurrency.

Repeated problems

However, his presence on twitter has also caused him some legal problems in the past.

He was thus forced to step down as Chairman of the Tesla Board of Directors in 2018 after a serious clash with the US Commission on Securities Transactions, accusing him of having misled investors by tweeting about a possible withdrawal of Tesla. of the Stock Exchange.

With an estimated fortune of more than $ 180 billion, Musk, 49, topped Amazon boss Jeff Bezos in the Bloomberg billionaire rankings in early January, taking advantage of the 2020 soar in stocks. of his company Tesla, specializing in electric cars and darling of investors.

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