by Bhaswati Guha Majumder - May 14, 2021 05:25 AM
SpaceX, Tesla and Neuralink co-founder Elon Musk. (Mark Brake/Getty Images)
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has announced that the company will suspend the use of Bitcoin for the purchase of vehicles, citing environmental issues related to the cryptocurrency.
The billionaire wrote on Twitter: We are concerned about rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal, which has the worst emissions of any fuel.
Following this announcement, the price of Bitcoin plunged by more than 11 per cent.
In February 2021, Tesla announced that it would start accepting Bitcoins as a payment mode for its electric vehicles.
Elon Musk TV
Tesla Inc boss Elon Musk on Thursday denounced the insane amount of energy used to produce bitcoin, doubling down on his sudden rejection of the cryptocurrency as a means of payment over environmental concerns.
Musk, one of bitcoin s most ardent backers, tweeted a graph of bitcoin s power consumption and said: Energy usage trend over past few months is insane. (https://bit.ly/33BYV8Z)
That followed his tweet from Wednesday saying Tesla would no longer accept the cryptocurrency as payment for its electric cars because it came at a great cost to the environment, an about-face from his stance in March.
Musk decries bitcoin s insane energy use after Tesla payment U-turn
By Hyunjoo Jin and Subrat Patnaik
Reuters
(Reuters) -Tesla Inc boss Elon Musk on Thursday denounced the insane amount of energy used to produce bitcoin, doubling down on his sudden rejection of the cryptocurrency as a means of payment over environmental concerns.
Musk, one of bitcoin s most ardent backers, tweeted a graph of bitcoin s power consumption and said: Energy usage trend over past few months is insane. (https://bit.ly/33BYV8Z)
That followed his tweet from Wednesday saying Tesla would no longer accept the cryptocurrency as payment for its electric cars because it came at a great cost to the environment, an about-face from his stance in March.
Tesla s Musk reverses course on taking bitcoin, citing climate concerns
By Hyunjoo Jin and Kanishka Singh
Reuters
(Reuters) -Tesla Inc has suspended the use of bitcoin to purchase its vehicles because of climate concerns, Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said in a tweet on Wednesday, reversing the company s stance in the face of an outcry from some environmentalists and investors.
Bitcoin, the world s biggest digital currency, fell more than 7% after the tweet and was trading at $52,669. Tesla Inc revealed in February it had bought $1.5 billion of bitcoin and would soon accept it as payment for cars, driving a roughly 20% surge in the world s most widely held cryptocurrency.