[hntrader]

There's also a more charitable interpretation though. It's not clear to me that the lack of disclosure benefited Musk.

Compare these two sequences of events:

1 - Initial purchase followed by disclosure followed by promotion

2 - Initial purchase followed by promotion followed by disclosure

In either case, Musk bought BTC at around 35k.

Do we have reason to think that the BTC price is higher now because Musk followed path (2) than (1)? It's not clear to me that that's the case here. And if it's not the case, then why on a first principles basis are we upset?

I agree though that "best practice" is to disclose upfront, if for little other reason than pump and dumpers (which Musk is not) have muddied the waters and this has become a generally good tradition to uphold as a result.