Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who oversaw the company's decision to buy $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin earlier this year, has joined a curious trend, adopting a Twitter profile photo of an anime woman with glowing red eyes and Bitcoinin the background.

Just for a day

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 19, 2021

US Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-Wy.), a Bitcoin holder who sits on the Senate Banking Committee, has them too—red laser eyes atop her actual photo.

i have spent 10 long years on this website and this is easily one of my favorite ever moments on here https://t.co/Fv3f26Xcd9

— unfettered nic carter (@nic__carter) February 19, 2021

They join a who's who of Bitcoin advocates that includes CoinShares' executive Meltem Demirors and MicroStrategy's CEO Michael Saylor, all with glowing, demonic-looking eyes.

What's going on here?

"It's meant to convey activation and growing power levels," Neeraj Agrawal, head of communications for cryptocurrency think tank Coin Center, told Decrypt. "Think about when a character's eyes glow in a movie."

According to the website Know Your Meme, the TV trope of characters with glowing eyes was first widely used in meme form after the video game?Mass Effect 2was released in 2010; enemies' eyes in the game glow yellow when they're controlled by another entity. People took to photoshop, added the caption "assuming direct control," and a meme was born.

It's taken a while to spread all the way to Bitcoin, but on February 15, crypto podcaster Greg Zaj tweeted "#LaserRayUntil100K" in reference to Bitcoin, which is currently priced at around $55,000, moving all the way to $100,000.

Magdalena Gronowska, an inspector in the Quadriga crypto exchange bankruptcy who helped establish 3iQ's Bitcoin Fund, told Decrypt, "#LaserRayUntil100K is bitcoiners coming together to celebrate the 100k that's in our sight."

As for whether she'll keep the laser eyes on her Twitter profile picture until Bitcoin reaches $100,000, she said, "For a few months, yes."

At the rate Bitcoin is going—a 91% increase since the start of the year—that may be plenty of time.

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