Nearly everywhere Elon Musk goes, people want to talk about Tesla. On Tuesday, however, the media magnet went along with a change in focus by discussing his views about cryptocurrencies.

His opinions come within months of a Bitcoin-related tweet that landed him in hot water with the social media platform. He ended up getting his account suspended by Twitter.

Musk discussed this and more in a very lighthearted interview with Ark Invest.

We had @elonmusk on the latest episode of @ARKInvest's podcast! He had a few things to say about Bitcoin. "Paper money is going away and cryptocurrency is a far better way to transfer value than pieces of paper." – Elon Muskhttps://t.co/U5qOnM7nBo — Yassine Elmandjra (@yassineARK) February 19, 2019

Click below to tune in to the podcast.

“Crypto, seriously?”

Musk has periodically talked about his interest in cryptocurrencies. Once he was pictured with a book about cryptocurrency in his hand, and the internet rumor mills went crazy, CCN.com reported.

The interviewers from Ark Invest spent the bulk of the roughly 30-minute sit down with Musk asking about Tesla. When that topic was exhausted, one of the interviewers broached the subject of cryptos.

To that, Musk laughed, “Crypto! Seriously!”

He struck a more serious tone and said:

I think the Bitcoin structure is quite brilliant. There seems like there is some merit to Ethereum as well, and obviously others. But I’m not sure if it’s a good use of Tesla resources to get involved in cryptos.

Instead of trying to offer its own crypto, Musk said Tesla is more focused on sustainable energy.

We’re really just trying to accelerate the advances of sustainable energy. One downside of Bitcoin is in computationally; it’s quite energy intensive. There has to be some kind of constraint on the creation of crypto. It’s very energy intensive to create the incremental bitcoin at this point. It bypasses currency controls. Paper money is going away, and crypto is a far better way to transfer value than pieces of paper. That’s for sure.

Last year, Musk acknowledged his crypto holdings, tweeting:

Not sure. I let @jack know, but it’s still going. I literally own zero cryptocurrency, apart from .25 BTC that a friend sent me many years ago. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 22, 2018

The Bitcoin Tweet That Got Musk Banned

Musk poked fun at himself a little, too. He talked about a tweet he posted about Bitcoin to just try to be funny. It backfired and led to Twitter banning his account.

Through his laughter, Musk said:

Bitcoin and Ethereum scammers were so rampant on Twitter that I said I’d just join in. At one point I said ‘hey, you wanna buy some bitcoin?’ And then my account got suspended. [There’s] some automatic rule that if you try to sell bitcoin or something. And I was just joking.

He was referring to this tweet:

Wanna buy some Bitcoin? 😉😉 pic.twitter.com/9ZbBJ5fuVq — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 22, 2018

Musk even laughed when the interviewer said that in the U.S. you can’t use crypto to buy things like pizza or coke.

Musk chuckled:

“It might be for coke.”

The interviewers gave Musk extreme praise, saying to him that he’d made the world a better place.

Musk immediately harkened to the comedy show “Silicon Valley,” and a famous line from it about making the world a better place.

He laughed, once again:

Make the world a better place by social, mobile, crypto!”

What a hoot he is; maybe he’s not losing his mind after all.

Elon Musk image via REUTERS/Kyle Grillot.