Just when you thought the bitcoin frenzy couldn’t get any more bizarre, along comes Elon Musk and his $US1.5 billion ($1.9 billion) punt on the digital asset – with other people’s money of course.

For bitcoin true believers, the billionaire’s big bet is the ultimate imprimatur on its big future as an apolitical, non-state, decentralised and deterministic monetary technology that will shelter them from central bank madness. Or something like that.