If there is one man who represents all things innovative then Elon Musk it is. After all, since his early days at Paypal, he has gone on to pioneer electric cars, reusable space rockets and… even more boring things. Now, the man who is the driving force of Tesla and SpaceX has stated on the public record that he believes cryptocurrency has a viable future and believes that it has the potential to offer a strong alternative to paper money.

Although he is very positive on the future of bitcoin and the wider crypto economy, Musk did make it clear that he has no plans to put Tesla’s resources into cryptocurrency in the foreseeable future. In a podcast with ARK Invest, which has holdings in the electric car manufacturer, he stated

“Bitcoin is interesting and could be a good way to transfer money. Bitcoin’s structure is brilliant, but I don’t think it would be a good use of Tesla’s resources to get involved in crypto.”

This is not the first time that Musk’s name has come up in relation to Bitcoin, the most noteable being back in October last year when his Twitter account got temporarily suspended over a tongue in cheek post about buying bitcoin.

However, this is perhaps the first time that Mr Musk has sat down and engaged in serious discussion on the cryptocurrency space, talking about both sides of bitcoin –

“Paper money is going away, and crypto is a much better value for a transfer of value than pieces of paper, but it has its pros and cons. It’s very energy intensive to create bitcoin at this point.”

There is of course the possibility that all this is smoke and mirrors,if the rumours that Musk is the real Satoshi Nakamoto, creator of Bitcoin, are to be believed. That particular discussion will have to wait – unless anybody can come up with compelling evidence to support the claims.

It seems, for the time being at least, that Musk is happy to watch from a distance – but don’t let anything surprise you with this man, after all, he is well known to work in mysterious ways.