Elon Musk, who doesn’t know this guy? Tesla is Elon Musk and Elon Musk is Tesla. He founded Tesla Motors in July 2003 and later on became the CEO in 2008. He also co-founded, SpaceX, Neuralink, and The Boring Company. A centibillionaire and the richest man on the entire planet with a net worth of $200 billion. He holds so much clout in the crypto space which is highly evident in how he influenced his followers in his previous tweets. He loves cryptos as much as he loves rockets. BTC (Bitcoin) and DOGE (dogecoin) were two of his favorites digital assets.
But what else do you know about Elon Musk? Let’s do a little storytelling about this amazing person with a great mind. Let us try to get to know Elon Musk, the man behind the name.
His Childhood and Growing Up Stage
We have heard a lot of stories about certain crypto personalities with humble beginnings. Binance founder and CEO, Changpeng Zhao has a rag to riches story. In the case of Musk, he never had such though he was not on the same level as Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates.
His mother was a Canadian and his father was a South African. His mother is Maye Musk, a model and a dietician. His father, Errol Musk, was an electromechanical engineer, pilot, sailor, consultant, and property developer. In his interview with Rolling Stone in 2017, he revealed that his father was a genius and the youngest to earn the qualification of a professional engineer in South Africa.
He was raised in South Africa together with his younger brother Kimbal and younger sister Tosca. In 1980, after his parents divorced, he stayed with his father. His relationship with his father was severed. Matters went from bad to worst when he later found out that his father had a child with his former 30-year old stepdaughter Jana Bezuidenhout.
His Education
He temporarily attended the University of Pretoria for five months while waiting for his application for a Canadian passport. In June 1989, he traveled to Montreal Canada but unfortunately was not able to locate his relative and ended up staying in a youth hostel. In 1990, he went to his cousin in Saskatchewan. Though he was raised with a comfortable life, he started working odd jobs at a farm lumber mill for a year.
In 1990, he attended Queen’s University then later transferred to the University of Pennsylvania. He finished his BS Degree in Economics and BA in Physics at Wharton School in 1997.
He took up two internships at Silicon Valley in 1994 for the Pinnacle Research Institute. In 1995, he was admitted to a Ph. D. program in energy at Stanford University but dropped out just two days later.
His Career Path
Equipped with his education, enthusiasm, determination, and yes a genius mind, he set up his first startup project. He has an IQ score of 155 so he is definitely a genius, right? Together with his brother Kimbal and Greg Kouri, they founded Zip2, a web software company in 1995. Zip2 works more like an online business directory with locational maps included. Later, it has provided content for The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune websites. It was later sold to Compaq Computer Corporation at $307 million and $34 million in stock options in 1999.
The brothers now a tandem, founded X.com, a company that offers online financial and payment services. In March 2000, X.com merged with its competitor, Confinity, and Musk, the biggest shareholder Musk was appointed CEO. In October 2000, he was replaced by Peter Thiel. X.com is now known as Paypal.
In October 2002, Paypal was sold to eBay at $1.5 billion in stock. Musk owns 11 percent of PayPal stock before the sale.
In 2002, he founded Space Exploration Technologies Corporation or SpaceX. With SpaceX, Musk’s ultimate goal is to build spacecraft for commercial space travel. On December 23, 2008, SpaceX was awarded a $1.6 billion contract by NASA to transport cargo and supplies to the ISS.
But this is just the beginning. On May 22, 2012, his company successfully launched Falcon 9 rocket into space with an unmanned capsule. This started the series of success for the Falcon 9 completed missions. And same goes with Elon Musk.
In March 2008, through his founded company Tesla Motors, he unveiled to the public Roadster, the quickest car in the world. It can accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in 3.7 seconds. Also, it can travel for nearly 250 miles between the charges of its lithium-ion battery.
In June 2010, under a partnership with Toyota, it launched its initial public offering and raised $226 million.
But Tesla has been embroiled with some controversies. Speculations surfaced that the recent bitcoin purchase made by the company was intended to divert the public’s attention away from Tesla’s recent clash with Chinese authorities. But seems like the speculation was unsubstantiated with no mere mention on news anywhere.
His Crypto Journey
Elon Musk with 49M Twitter followers is one of the most influential personalities in the entire crypto industry. His tweets have made the prices of bitcoin and dogecoin skyrocket. His company, Tesla, has made purchased bitcoins worth 1.5B on Feb. 8.
On Feb. 10, he announced through a tweet that he purchased dogecoin for his son. His announcement made the price of dogecoin jumped by 16%.
Tesla’s bitcoin purchase had caused euphoria in the crypto market sending bitcoin to a price rally. But in a tweet, Elon Musk was quick to explain that “Tesla’s action was not directly reflective of his opinion.”
Though he was admired and respected by a lot of people in the crypto market, he was also criticized by fellow influencers like Nick Carter and Mike Novogratz stating his dogecoin enthusiasm as “disconcerting”. In reply to one of his dogecoin tweets, a Twitter user even branded him as a “destroyer of lives”.
But just like the rest of us, we all play favorites. His favorite altcoin is now accepted as payment for NBA tickets and merchandise by Dallas Mavericks. Even Nissan Daytona is now accepting Dogecoin. The newest addition was Kessler Collection to businesses that accept crypto as payment which includes the virtual asset.
Whether it’s about bitcoin or dogecoin, Elon Musk is undeniably a great influencer within the crypto space. His wealth, fame, and power extend even to the real world given his massive achievements.
