Would such a strategy be illegal?

Welcome to the wild west of Crypto. People have been doing this or similar schemes since 2010. But I don't think that was Elon's intention. He has pretty good point after all. Bitcoin just produced too much unnecessary CO2, so it's simply not gonna work as a money replacement. I think more people start to realize this, but are still a bit reluctant to sell their BTC.

It was absolutely his intention. Everyone who owns bitcoin wants it to go up. This is exactly a pump and dump strategy. He went on SNL to make a broader market aware of it, then in the interest it created, he offloads his shares?

Smartest guy on the planet, claiming to be saving it from climate change didn't know Bitcoin damages the environment?

If he didn't already know that, then can he be trusted? If he did know that, can he be trusted?

Actually yeah who knows. It does make Tesla investment into Bitcoin look completely naive and shortsighted. They surely should have known a few month ago? Did they even start selling cars for coins?

Also probably a good idea to check the real CO2 numbers, they often get extrapolated I think.

Keep in mind that bitcoin is software. It can, and will be upgraded. If Ethereum ends up leading the way with proof of stake and it ends up being a success, then there is no reason to believe that bitcoin wouldn't follow in its footsteps. Crypto is a concept, as much as it is an individual coin game. Bitcoin may not end up being the leader, but your money will definitely change in the future, and it will absolutely be because of crypto currencies.

> Keep in mind that bitcoin is software

Sort of. The miner pools have a lot invested in special-purpose hardware. It's not clear what would happen if people tried to make a change miners weren't interested in. Yes, you can threaten a hard fork, but angry miners could freeze transactions, revealing how not-so-decentralized it really is, destroying confidence in it as a currency.

This same logic was paraded around in 2017 and it's gone mostly nowhere in the years since.

Primarily because the bitcoin codebase got taken over by some bad actors. However, if ETH takes over in market share, BTC can either improve or become irrelevant. The people controlling bitcoin may be dumb, but they aren't dumb enough to let something else take over without a fight.

Exactly. If other currencies prove a better way, and especially if they start taking significant market share, there's nothing stopping bitcoin from following in its footsteps. There's just no point making such a big change when there's plenty of other coins out there to experiment with first.

hasn't like 99% of it been mined already?

competition from miners to accept fees will still exist

Only if it is provable that the intent was to trick other people into buying Bitcoin so you can sell it (pump and dump). For something big like Bitcoin it would be hard to prove. For penny stocks it happens and does get prosecuted.

In most asset classes: yes.

In crypto: nope.

Not really, if the buyer/seller is not actually lying.

Is bitcoin regulated?

No, but fraud is.

I’d wager instead: the price of all crypto goes down.

Tesla buys into some unknown proof-of-stake coin.