• Home
  • Latest
  • Fortune 500
  • Finance
  • Tech
  • Leadership
  • Lifestyle
  • Rankings
  • Multimedia

Trendingnow

1

Bolt CEO says he let go of his entire HR team for creating problems that didn’t exist: ‘Those problems disappeared when I let them go’ 

2

Meet a 21-year-old community college student who's going to China as the first American woman welder in the trades Olympics

3

Despite a $500 million net worth, Shaq just finished his fourth degree. He warns graduates: 'Your character will take you further than your resume'

1

Bolt CEO says he let go of his entire HR team for creating problems that didn’t exist: ‘Those problems disappeared when I let them go’ 

2

Meet a 21-year-old community college student who's going to China as the first American woman welder in the trades Olympics

3

Despite a $500 million net worth, Shaq just finished his fourth degree. He warns graduates: 'Your character will take you further than your resume'
TechBitcoin

3 big takeaways from Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey, and Cathie Wood’s Bitcoin showdown

Rey Mashayekhi
By
Rey Mashayekhi
Rey Mashayekhi
Down Arrow Button Icon
Rey Mashayekhi
By
Rey Mashayekhi
Rey Mashayekhi
Down Arrow Button Icon
July 21, 2021, 9:16 PM ET
Video Poster

After weeks of hype, three of the tech world’s most prominent Bitcoin boosters took to the virtual stage Wednesday to discuss the value and potential of the benchmark cryptocurrency.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Square and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, and ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood came together for “The B Word,” a virtual conference cohosted by Wood’s investment firm and Dorsey’s fintech giant, as well as the crypto investment firm Paradigm. The conversation had been highly anticipated since Musk and Dorsey took to Twitter last month to tease their participation in the event, which aimed to “demystify and destigmatize mainstream narratives about Bitcoin” and “explain how institutions can embrace it.”

Over the course of the panel discussion, the three Bitcoin believers aired their views on everything from its prospects as a widely accepted form of currency to its controversially intensive energy usage. Here are a few notable takeaways from their chat:

SpaceX owns Bitcoin

Tesla made waves earlier this year in disclosing that it had $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin on its balance sheet—a big bet that, for the time being, hasn’t paid off amid the token’s recent price struggles. But Musk noted that the electric-car maker isn’t the only company he runs that holds Bitcoin—revealing that SpaceX, his privately owned aerospace and satellite communications company, also owns the crypto. He did not disclose how much Bitcoin is on SpaceX’s books, however.

Additionally, Musk disclosed that he personally owns Bitcoin, fellow benchmark token Ethereum, and Dogecoin, the memecoin whose popularity and price he’s helped spike in 2021. The price of all three tokens spiked Wednesday in the wake of his revelations, though they all subsequently leveled off.

Bitcoin’s energy use

Bitcoin has faced ample scrutiny lately for the huge amounts of energy required to mine the cryptocurrency—the major factor in Tesla’s decision to stop accepting Bitcoin as payment for its vehicles earlier this year.

But Musk reiterated that his automaker could begin accepting Bitcoin again if miners were to rely more on cleaner energy sources, and he noted “a positive trend” in that direction. “It looks like Bitcoin is shifting a lot more toward renewables,” he said, noting that “a bunch of the heavy-duty coal plants that were being used” to mine Bitcoin “have been shut down, especially in China.” He added that once he could establish that the percentage of Bitcoin’s renewable energy usage “is most likely at or above 50%, and that there is a trend toward increasing that number,” then Tesla would resume accepting Bitcoin.

Wood offered her own thoughts about how Bitcoin fits within the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing movement, saying she believes that Bitcoin “will be much more environmentally friendly—certainly more than traditional gold mining or the traditional financial services sector. In many ways, it already is.” She also said she thinks Bitcoin has much to offer in the “social” and “governance” aspects of ESG—the former by providing financially underserved people with “access to payment technology…everywhere around the world without friction,” and the latter by offering transparency “unlike the opaqueness of financial systems and the toll-takers in the traditional financial world.”

Should Twitter let advertisers pay with crypto?

In discussing Bitcoin’s disruptive potential, Dorsey said the cryptocurrency could function as the Internet’s “native currency” in a way that would help businesses small and large grow “in a much faster way.” He cited Twitter as an example, expressing his belief that the social media giant “would certainly not have the dependency we have upon the advertising business model if Bitcoin existed pre-Twitter.”

Musk later picked up on that though in asking Dorsey directly why Twitter doesn’t go down that route. “What about letting Twitter advertisers pay in crypto?” he floated. While Dorsey said he believes that “any form of payment that they want to use, we should be able to take,” he noted that he’s “more focused on how do we create economic incentives in [Twitter’s] network itself without having to rely on advertising.”

But Musk would not be denied—stressing the importance of allowing more “off-ramps” by which cryptocurrencies can “get translated into real products and services,” and adding that “accepting Bitcoin and maybe some other cryptos for advertising payments on Twitter would be supportive” of Bitcoin. He then doubled down and asked the Twitter CEO “if he’s gonna do it,” to the amusement of the others on the panel—except for Dorsey, who shrugged off the question with a nonplussed expression.

Subscribe to Fortune Daily to get essential business stories straight to your inbox each morning.
About the Author
Rey Mashayekhi
By Rey Mashayekhi
LinkedIn iconTwitter icon
See full bioRight Arrow Button Icon

Latest in Tech

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025

Most Popular

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Fortune Secondary Logo
Rankings
  • 100 Best Companies
  • Fortune 500
  • Global 500
  • Fortune 500 Europe
  • Most Powerful Women
  • World's Most Admired Companies
  • See All Rankings
  • Lists Calendar
Sections
  • Finance
  • Fortune Crypto
  • Features
  • Leadership
  • Health
  • Commentary
  • Success
  • Retail
  • Mpw
  • Tech
  • Lifestyle
  • CEO Initiative
  • Asia
  • Politics
  • Conferences
  • Europe
  • Newsletters
  • Personal Finance
  • Environment
  • Magazine
  • Education
Customer Support
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • Customer Service Portal
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms Of Use
  • Single Issues For Purchase
  • International Print
Commercial Services
  • Advertising
  • Fortune Brand Studio
  • Fortune Analytics
  • Fortune Conferences
  • Business Development
  • Group Subscriptions
About Us
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • Facebook icon
  • Twitter icon
  • LinkedIn icon
  • Instagram icon
  • Pinterest icon

Latest in Tech

Samuel Corum/Getty Images
Big TechSpaceX
Elon Musk’s proposed pay package in SpaceX’s IPO filing reveals what the company actually is: a $1 trillion monster built to colonize Mars
By Eva RoytburgMay 20, 2026
3 hours ago
elon
SuccessIPOs
SpaceX IPO targets $28.5 trillion total addressable market, mission to ‘make life multiplanetary’ and understand ‘true nature of the universe’
By Nick LichtenbergMay 20, 2026
5 hours ago
Jensen Huang, chief executive officer of Nvidia
AINvidia
Nvidia tells skeptical investors that AI is ready to go mainstream
By Ian King and BloombergMay 20, 2026
6 hours ago
SpaceX finally files IPO prospectus, reveals revenue is up–but losses are too
Big TechSpaceX
SpaceX finally files IPO prospectus, reveals revenue is up–but losses are too
By Allie Garfinkle and Alexei OreskovicMay 20, 2026
6 hours ago
Elon Musk sits with his fists together, looking up.
Commentaryspace
SpaceX will be worth trillions, but the space station that made it possible is worth even more — if we don’t squander it
By Tejpaul BhatiaMay 20, 2026
6 hours ago
Antler CEO Magnus Grimeland says Silicon Valley doesn’t have a monopoly on tech: ‘People can innovate from almost anywhere’
AsiaAsia Agenda
Antler CEO Magnus Grimeland says Silicon Valley doesn’t have a monopoly on tech: ‘People can innovate from almost anywhere’
By Angelica AngMay 20, 2026
6 hours ago

Most Popular

Bolt CEO says he let go of his entire HR team for creating problems that didn’t exist: ‘Those problems disappeared when I let them go’ 
Workplace Culture
Bolt CEO says he let go of his entire HR team for creating problems that didn’t exist: ‘Those problems disappeared when I let them go’ 
By Preston ForeMay 19, 2026
1 day ago
Meet a 21-year-old community college student who's going to China as the first American woman welder in the trades Olympics
Future of Work
Meet a 21-year-old community college student who's going to China as the first American woman welder in the trades Olympics
By Mike Householder and The Associated PressMay 17, 2026
4 days ago
Despite a $500 million net worth, Shaq just finished his fourth degree. He warns graduates: 'Your character will take you further than your resume'
Success
Despite a $500 million net worth, Shaq just finished his fourth degree. He warns graduates: 'Your character will take you further than your resume'
By Preston ForeMay 20, 2026
12 hours ago
The Bezos family just donated $100 million to help achieve one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s top campaign promises
Politics
The Bezos family just donated $100 million to help achieve one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s top campaign promises
By Jake AngeloMay 12, 2026
8 days ago
Spirit Airlines apologizes to all the Americans who can't afford any summer vacation flights as it shuts down
Travel & Leisure
Spirit Airlines apologizes to all the Americans who can't afford any summer vacation flights as it shuts down
By Rio Yamat and The Associated PressMay 18, 2026
3 days ago
Dr. Bernice King on why companies that walked back DEI were never truly committed: 'If you retreat that quick…that reveals who you really are'
Workplace Culture
Dr. Bernice King on why companies that walked back DEI were never truly committed: 'If you retreat that quick…that reveals who you really are'
By Preston ForeMay 19, 2026
1 day ago

© 2026 Fortune Media IP Limited. All Rights Reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy | CA Notice at Collection and Privacy Notice | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information
FORTUNE is a trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, registered in the U.S. and other countries. FORTUNE may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Offers may be subject to change without notice.