Earlier this week Tesla announced a $1.5 billion purchase of Bitcoin, also saying it would soon accept the cryptocurrency as a method of payment for its vehicles.
While the move surprised a lot of people, one Reddit user said he knew about the purchase more than a month before it was announced. On January 2, a user named “TSLAinsider” posted in the r/TSLA subreddit claiming to be a Tesla “software dev” with insider info about the automaker’s purchase of Bitcoin.
Not thinking much of it, the moderators removed the post shortly after it was posted. Fast forward one month and all of a sudden the post didn’t seem so ridiculous. It was so intriguing that major news outlets like Reuters and Bloomberg reported on it.
As it turns out, r/TSLAinsider doesn’t actually work at Tesla. Instead his name is Hendrik, a 24-year old political science student from Germany who was high on acid when he made the post. Hendrik made the admission in an interview with the NY 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, its kinda funny and scary to be honest.”
Hendrik, who only wanted to be identified by his first name, said he came up with the idea after seeing Elon Musk discuss cryptocurrency with Michael Saylor.
“Me and my girlfriend, we took acid, and I saw the conversation between Michael Saylor and Elon Musk on Twitter, and I was like, yeah, why shouldn’t he buy into bitcoin? He’s crazy and he has a lot of money, so why not?”
Despite the troll post, Hendrik says he is an active investor in Bitcoin since his first purchase as a teenager.
