By Dhirendra Tripathi
Investing.com – Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) shares erased some of their losses but were still down more than 3% amid a collapse in cryptocurrency prices, even as Elon Musk tried to salvage the situation by tweeting ‘Diamond hands.’
The ‘Diamond hands’ signal that the EV maker's CEO is prepared for the long haul in defending Bitcoin (BitfinexUSD), the biggest crypto and his favorite till a week ago before he switched his loyalty to Dogecoin.
Musk’s tweet helped Bitcoin recoup some of the losses after plunging to $30,000 earlier in the day, the fall precipitated by China clamping down on crypto transactions and warning against its speculative trading.
Bitcoin later traded above $37,000, still 13% down. Ethereum ETH/USD and Dogecoin DOGE/USD were both trading 20% down after falling 25% earlier in the day.
Musk and his car company are both invested in Bitcoin. There had been much speculation about the fate of Tesla’s $1.5 billion investment made in Bitcoin in February before Musk clarified this week that it was intact.
Much damage to the crypto world, particularly Bitcoin, was inflicted last week by Musk when he said Tesla would stop accepting Bitcoin. He cited high energy consumption in mining of crypto behind his decision.
Shares of Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN) were down 6% as the crypto exchange reported outages.