From DOGE to Bitcoin: How fiat accidentally ‘orange-pilled’ Elon Musk

Elon Musk’s ambitious goals of tackling excess spending and inefficiencies in the US federal government may have been futile, but it might have been the catalyst for his changing tune on Bitcoin.

So, why is finally talking about Bitcoin’s intrinsic connection to physics and energy?

As eloquently explains, Elon has firsthand experience trying to stop excess government spending with .

“He’s run that experiment and he knows that it is not possible…

— Gareth Jenkinson (@gazza_jenks)

The Tesla and SpaceX founder went viral on social media after suggesting that Bitcoin would replace fiat money because of it’s intrinsic connection to physical energy. Musk made the comments in conversation with Indian entrepreneur Nikhil Kamath:

“Energy is the true currency. That’s why I say Bitcoin is based on energy.”

“You can’t legislate energy. You can’t just pass a law and suddenly have a lot of energy. It’s very difficult to generate energy, or especially to harness energy in a useful way to do useful work,” Musk said. 

Naturally, the viral clip was shared widely by Bitcoin advocates and industry experts. It is also one of the first times Musk has publicly spoken about Bitcoin in recent years. He went on to to tell Kamath that society could move away from the prevailing fiat money-based system. 

“We probably won’t have money. We’ll just have power generation as the defacto currency,” Musk said.

DOGE failure pushed Elon back to Bitcoin

Bitcoin mining advocate Daniel Batten told Cointelegraph’s Chain Reaction show that Musk’s futile efforts to assist the Trump administration to address excess government expenditure have inevitably changed his perception on the financial system. 

Now, this is a show I’ve wanted to do for a while!, Bitcoin misinformation detector and bringer of receipts, joined and me to talk ‘s wise words, the media’s portrayal of mining, and the slew of Strategy stories.

— Robert Baggs (@rkbaggs)

“Elon’s been on a journey because he started off sincerely believing that it was possible to rein in government spending within a fiat-based economic system. And he had to run that experiment, set up DOGE and have it fail,” Batten said.

Batten said that Musk’s efforts to get the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to help address the US’ spiralling debt problem ended up being an experiment that opened his eyes to the reality of fiat monetary policy.

“He knows that it is not possible to rein in government spending when you have access to infinite money printing, then you have to have something which decouples money from the ability to infinitely print money.”

Batten added that Musk’s background in physics suggests that he’s now realizing that energy-backed monetary protocols are fundamentally resistant to inflation.

“Because of his background in physics, he’s clearly gone well, energy, that’s not something you can print into existence. That’s a fundamentally better way to create sound money. So gradually he’s coming toward a conclusion that Bitcoin is it.”

Bitcoin mining’s perception is finally changing

Batten also weighed in on the changing perception toward the environmental impact of Bitcoin in recent years. Throughout the 2010s, mainstream media constantly portrayed Bitcoin’s energy use as significantly bad for the environment.

These reports and the overarching narrative have largely been debunked thanks to several academic papers and research reports, including

Batten said that European policymakers have been particularly influenced by years of erroneous reports on Bitcoin’s environmental impact.

“They’ve created policies based on the factually incorrect soundbite that Bitcoin uses a lot of energy per transaction, which it doesn’t, of course.”

Batten clarified that Bitcoin’s energy use comes directly from mining, not through individual transactions, which he described as ‘critically important to understand’ because the network can theoretically process thousands more transactions without needing to expend more energy.

“The moment you have this per-transaction metric, it suggests something very insidious, which is, it’s unscalable because as you scale more, then energy use is going to go up as well. And a lot of regulators in Europe still believe that,” Batten said.

For a comprehensive deep-dive into the ins and outs of Bitcoin mining, check out .