Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX and Tesla, just made a mysterious tweet about bitcoin that's whipping up speculation across social media and the cryptocurrency community that it may be more than just a joke.

Around 22:30 UTC on Monday, Musk – one of the highest-profile Twitter users – said in a tweet via his verified account that reads: "I love anime."

In the same thread, he made another comment around 23:00 UTC, stating: "Wanna buy some bitcoin?" alongside an anime image that features the bitcoin logo.

The image was originally created by the website Cryptocurrency Girls, which has turned some of the world's largest cryptocurrencies into anime characters.

Musk's thread immediately proved popular over social media, attracting over 8,000 likes and over 3,000 retweets within hours of being posted.

The bitcoin message appears to have even prompt Twitter to believe that Musk's account had been hacked, as Musk said in a later tweet:

Musk has frequently been impersonated by scammers, who have made fake accounts in order to peddle fake crypto "giveaways" to unaware users – sometimes even via sponsored content on Twitter – and it may be that his tweet is poking fun at the fraudsters.

Since the tweets went out, prominent figures in the cryptocurrency community have been engaging with Musk's bitcoin post.

Notably, Zhao Changpeng – founder of Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume – commented in a perhaps half-joking retweet: "Lol, it's spreading. I will buy a Tesla if you accept crypto..."

Dovey Wan, the founder of Primitive Ventures and a former managing director of Danhua Venture Capital, also appeared to be surprised by Musk's bitcoin shout-out, tweeting:

Editor's Note: The headline of this article has been amended to reflect the nature of the article. 

Elon Musk image via Shutterstock