Tesla and SpaceX chief Elon Musk is not one to mince words on Twitter, but this time he responded to a critical tweet with a single emoji. On Tuesday, Euro Pacific Capital CEO Peter Schiff, a bitcoin skeptic, shared a tweet noting that Tesla shares had been falling since Mr Musk "spent $1.5 billion of shareholder money buying bitcoin".
According to Crypto News, Mr Schiff is a known bitcoin detractor who has repeatedly praised the value of investing in gold.
"Two weeks after @elonmusk announced that he spent $1.5 billion of shareholder money buying bitcoin, #Tesla stock entered a bear market, plunging 20 percent from its all-time high set on January 25th, and 16 percent since disclosing the bitcoin buy," Mr Schiff wrote on Twitter, adding that other CEOs would not be likely to follow the example set by Elon Musk.
To this lengthy tweet, Mr Musk responded with a single emoji - the eggplant.
His tweet has racked up more than 1.4 lakh 'likes' on the microblogging platform, whereas Mr Schiff's post garnered over 24,000 'likes'. Many of Mr Musk's followers took the emoji to mean that he was dismissive of Mr Schiff's opinion, as the eggplant emoji is considered to be rude for its phallic symbolism.
Elon Musk's one-emoji response earned him another reproving tweet from Peter Schiff, who responded by writing: "For someone of your intellect I would have expected a more thoughtful reply, not something one would hear at a playground. Does this mean our clubhouse conversation is not happening?"
This interaction followed another conversation which had taken place between the two earlier this week, which again centred on cryptocurrency.
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