Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) CEO Elon Musk updated his Twitter bio on Friday — adding the word Bitcoin (BTC). As a result, the cryptocurrency’s price soared 20% instantly to reach $37,413 then slightly decreased to $34,000.

Currently, Musk has over 44 million followers on Twitter.  On many occasions, his tweets proved he is more into Dogecoin. However, his latest move suggests that he is becoming more interested in Bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency Bitcoin. 

This is not the first time that Musk contributed to the surge of a cryptocurrency. In December, he tweeted about Dogecoin, resulting in a 20% price surge.

On Friday,  over $387 million worth of Bitcoin short liquidations occurred on Binance, FTX, Bitfinex, and other major cryptocurrency platforms. Market observers suggested that it was prompted by the billionaire adding Bitcoin to his profile on the microblogging platform.  

The Bitcoin short liquidations on Friday was the largest since January 2 when $575 million worth of shorts were closed that day,  according to data provider Coinalyze.

An Elon Musk tweet can move markets

Additionally, Musk’s tweets have been moving markets. He tweeted about GameStop (NYSE: GME) calling it “GameStonks” — a meme name, and a slang word for stocks, that social media users gave to the company after its recent price surge. Moreover, Musk’s tweet contributed to adding over $10 billion of valuation to the company.

Gamestonk!! https://t.co/RZtkDzAewJ

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 26, 2021

Few hours after tweeting about Gamestop — Musk tweeted “I kinda love Etsy”, causing a 9% surge to the online craft marketplace.

I kinda love Etsy

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 26, 2021

Ironically, Musk tweeted in 2018 that he wants to take Tesla private at $420 per share. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) didn’t take his tweet lightly. The Commission fined Tesla and Musk a total of $40 million ($20 million each) to settle the suit for breaking federal securities laws.

And it didn’t stop there — in 2020, Musk tweeted against his own company. He said that Tesla’s stock was “too high,” causing his company’s shares an instant 10% downturn. Last week, Musk told his followers to “use signal” as an alternative to Whatsapp. The tweet accidentally contributed to the rise of a wrong company, giving its stock a 1,100% price increase.

Cryptocurrency exchanges halt after Elon’s tweet           

Binance the largest cryptocurrency in the world, temporarily suspended withdrawals on Friday. According to the company’s CEO Changpeng Zhao, the exchange platform was overloaded. 

Furthermore, Zhao said that Elon Musk’s adding the word #Bitcoin to his Twitter profile resulted in massive traffic that the exchange couldn’t bear.  Zhao told Decrypt that Binance has seen “exponential growth in user traffic, trading volumes, and deposit & withdrawal volumes, and system load across the board.”

Binance's CEO added: "It could have been Elon’s Twitter profile change. It could have been WallStreetBets. It could have been some whales in Asia or Uganda or 1,000 other potential reasons. There is no way to be 100% sure. It’s all likely, but who knows.”

Finally, Zhao suggests that Musk’s tweet resulted in the Dogecoin shortage. He said, "We almost ran out of Dogecoin deposit addresses because the new address generator wasn’t able to generate new addresses for user deposits fast enough to match user deposits. On the withdrawal side, our normal number of nodes can’t process the amount of withdrawals that’s happening either. We had to significantly increase the number of nodes in a short period of time. Whenever there are [sic] exponential growth, there are high chances of congestion." 

Binance is currently back online.

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