Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has been a key proponent in the latest surge of interest in dogecoin, according to analysts, as he consistently tweets about the cryptocurrency.
But ahead of his appearance on “Saturday Night Live” on NBC on May 8, Musk had a new message for his 53 million Twitter followers.
“Cryptocurrency is promising,” Musk wrote on Friday, “but please invest with caution!”
Musk also linked a video to an interview he did with TMZ in February, where he expressed the same sentiment.
“People should not invest their life savings in cryptocurrency, to be clear,” Musk told TMZ. “That’s unwise.”
But, he said, “if you want to speculate and have some fun — there’s a good chance that crypto is the future currency of Earth. Then it’s like, which one is it going to be? Maybe there will be multiple. But, it’s all speculation at this point.”
While most do not see cryptocurrency as the future reserve currency, experts agree that those buying it should only invest what they can afford to lose.
“Because their value doesn’t really correspond to some underlying source of value — such as real estate, or profits, or interest — there is almost no way to predict whether they will go up or down at any given moment,” James Ledbetter, editor of fintech newsletter FIN and CNBC contributor, tells CNBC Make It. “It is pure speculation.”
Musk, in particular, has supported dogecoin, a cryptocurrency that started as a joke which portrays a shiba inu dog, as he told TMZ.
“The point is that dogecoin was invented as a joke as essentially to make fun of cryptocurrency,” he told TMZ. “Fate loves irony. What would be the most ironic outcome? The currency that started as a joke in fact becomes the real currency. To the moon!”
Though all cryptocurrencies are risky and volatile, Ledbetter notes that when buying dogecoin, “you risk losing nearly all the money you put in,” he says. “It has no intrinsic value and it could just as easily come crashing down in price as continue to go up.”
In the past, Musk has kept to tweeting memes about dogecoin. Tesla, however, bought billions of dollars worth of bitcoin and accepts the cryptocurrency as payment for its vehicles.
Disclosure: NBCUniversal is the parent company of CNBC.
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