A Reddit post that predicted Tesla’s $1.5 billion purchase of bitcoin on Monday has been revealed as a hoax, after the New York Post tracked down the user.
Reddit User Says He Was High on Acid When Writing It
Tesla’s record-breaking bitcoin purchase stunned the markets earlier this week, causing the price of bitcoin to spike to a new high of over $48,000 per coin. Predicting a purchase of this size would require amazing foresight or insider knowledge, something which Reddit users were keen to figure out following a now-removed post from Jan. 2 by a user known only as Tslainsider.
But the identity of that poster has now been revealed by the New York Post, in an article which includes a rather shocking revelation from the 24-year-old political science student stating he was “high on acid” when he wrote it.
In an email sent on Tuesday, he told the New York Post:
If you want to know the truth: I am a young German guy and I was on acid while I did this post in the last month. I had this afflatus that Elon is going to buy bitcoin, so I created this trollpost. And now all the newspapers around the globe are writing about it, it’s kinda funny and scary to [sic] be honest.
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It’s unclear why the original poster, who we now know is a German national named “Hendrik,” decided to come clean about the post. Given what started as a prank escalated into a story that captured the attention of international news outlets such as Reuters and Bloomberg, Hendrik may have feared legal ramifications if his “trollpost” escalated further.
Hendrik went on to praise Musk for “getting Tesla into the bitcoin game” in the rest of the interview.
What do you think – amazing foresight or insider knowledge after all? Let us know in the comments section below.
