A German joker claims he was behind a mysterious Reddit post last month that seemed to anticipate Tesla’s bitcoin overproduction this week, and that he was in LSD when he did, The Post has learned.
Tesla shocked Wall Street on Monday when it revealed it had acquired $ 1.5 billion in bitcoins to “diversify and maximize returns” for its balance sheet cash. Tesla said it also plans to start accepting cryptocurrency as a payment option for its electric cars.
Shortly after the surprise announcement, attention turned to a Jan. 2 post from a Reddit user named “TSLAinsider” who had claimed to have burning advice on Tesla’s move into the cryptocurrency market.
“You first heard it here: our company just bought Bitcoin worth $ 800 million,” the five-week post said. The user, claiming to be “a software developer working in R&D at Tesla in California,” added that the company run by Elon Musk had bought 24,701 bitcoins at an average price of $ 33,142 “over the past 72 years. hours”.
The publication seemed such a precious prediction of Tesla’s investment in bitcoins that the financial media, including Reuters and Bloomberg, picked it up this week.
But in an interview with The Post, Hendrik, the 24-year-old political science student who was behind the TSLAinsider account, said he posted the post while he was very much in LSD during the holiday season.
“If you want to know the truth: I’m a young German and I was on Acid while doing this post last month,” the user told The Post on Tuesday in an email. “I had this grief that Elon was going to buy Bitcoin, so I created this trollpost. And now every newspaper around the world is writing about it, it’s really fun and scary.”
Hendrik, who asked to be identified only by his first name, said he had an intuition that Tesla would invest in Bitcoin after seeing a December Twitter exchange between Musk and MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor. business intelligence firm from which he bought more than $ 1 billion. the digital currency last year.
“My girlfriend and I took acid and watched the conversation between Michael Saylor and Elon Musk on Twitter, and I was wondering, yeah, why shouldn’t I buy Bitcoin?” Hendrik told The Post in an interview with Zoom of Germany. “He’s crazy and has a lot of money, why not?”
Hendrik provided The Post with a screenshot showing he was connected to TSLAinsider’s Reddit account, which he triumphantly posted “T’HO TOLO” after Tesla’s announcement on Monday.
Its initial post, which initially received no comments from other users, was dubious enough for the moderators of the Reddit forum dedicated to Tesla’s action to withdraw it, according to Hendrik.
Nor did it align with Tesla’s regulatory filing on Monday, which said the company bought Bitcoin after changing its investment policy in January. 72-hour purchases should have started in late December if TSLAinsider’s timeline were accurate.
Hendrik said he’s not active on Reddit, but decided to make a joke on the site because “everyone goes to Reddit to troll people.” However, he is an active investor in Bitcoin and has been so since he was a teenager, he says.
“I think it’s part of the technology of the future,” said Hendrik, praising Musk for incorporating Tesla into the Bitcoin game.
“He opened the door for other companies to do the same, as they all want to be like Elon,” he added.
Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.