Elon Musk says Tesla will stop accepting Bitcoin as payment, crashes crypto's price

[midian182]

What just happened? Bitcoin's value fell by almost 17% a few hours ago, and it's all Elon Musk's fault. The second-richest person in the world has suspended Tesla customers' ability to use the cryptocurrency when purchasing one of the company's EVs due to concerns over its impact on the climate.

Tesla's embracing of Bitcoin has helped pump the price even higher this year. The crypto reached an all-time high of $44,000 back in February when the automaker revealed it had invested $1.5 billion in Bitcoin and would soon accept it as payment. In March, Tesla started allowing US customers to pay for a Tesla using BTC.

But Musk has just done a U-turn, tweeting that Tesla is suspending vehicle purchases using Bitcoin, citing the environmental damage caused by mining. "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," Musk wrote. "Cryptocurrency is a good idea on many levels and we believe it has a promising future, but this cannot come at great cost to the environment."

Tesla & Bitcoin pic.twitter.com/YSswJmVZhP

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 12, 2021

Musk added that Tesla would not be selling any of its Bitcoin and intends to use it as soon as mining transitions to more sustainable energy—whenever that might be.

Interestingly, Musk added that "We are also looking at other cryptocurrencies that use <1% of bitcoin's energy/transaction." New crypto Chia positions itself as a greener alternative to other cryptos as it is "farmed" using drive space rather than mined with computing power, but we recently heard it can ruin a 512GB SDD in just over a month and is causing HDD/SDD shortages—not very environmentally friendly. Still, it's better than Bitcoin, which uses more energy each year than the whole of Sweden and could have a carbon footprint the same size as that of London.

Bitcoin's price over the last 24 hours. Spot the moment when Musk tweeted

Musk's Tweet saw Bitcoin's price tumble around 17% to $46,000, its lowest point since March 1. The rush to sell caused outages at some exchanges. It has rebounded slightly to ~$51,000, but that's still around $5,000 lower than before the CEO's post.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/89663-elon-musk-tesla-stop-accepting-bitcoin-payment-crashes.html

 

[Dimitriid]

I wonder how many people will claim this was Elon Musk genius plan to save us all along and how many will claim he's being secretly coerced by an international illuminati conspiracy.

Hopefully at least some people will recognize emperor Musk here, never actually had any clothes.

 

[VitalyT]

it's all Elon Musk's fault

Punchline for any issue with electric vehicles today.

 

[Lozzy]

Wonder if he sold his Bitcoin before tweeting that

 

[envirovore]

Wonder if he sold his Bitcoin before tweeting that

It's not like the articles here are 3 pages long and 250000 words...

 

[Lozzy]

It's not like the articles here are 3 pages long and 250000 words...

I didn't say Tesla's Bitcoin, I said his Bitcoin

 

[VitalyT]

He's just buying now, and will make another u-turn when done.

 

[QuantumPhysics]

Every Bubble eventually finds a pin!

 

[envirovore]

I didn't say Tesla's Bitcoin, I said his Bitcoin

I'll just enjoy the rest of my shoe for breakfast, thanks.

 

[bviktor]

I wonder how many people will claim this was Elon Musk genius plan to save us all along and how many will claim he's being secretly coerced by an international illuminati conspiracy.

Hopefully at least some people will recognize emperor Musk here, never actually had any clothes.

Nah, just a classic example of pump & dump. It was plain obvious from day 1 that Proof-of-Work is harmful to the environment. Yet Mr. Musk, the leader of like 3 different pioneer environmentalist companies failed to realize that for 12 years, somehow it took him 12 years and 4 months? I'm not buying it. (pun intended)

Musk does this pretty openly on his Twitter account too, both to BTC and DOGE. Heck, it was featured even on SNL. He just pushes the price in any direction he wants.

 

[pelopidas]

This article provides no analysis. Elon might state his reason for getting out of BTC is energy consumption but that would mean he is a stupid man and he isn’t. He is getting out because BTC is at the top of its bubble and is in for a correction. But he can’t say that because there are so many *****s that don’t understand markets who are in Twitter and discord echo chambers telling each other to hodl and sending each other diamond hand memes that once the crypto market starts seriously correcting they would blame Elon for the crash.

 

[ScottSoapbox]

10% change isn't a crash.

 

[Alfatawi Mendel]

Environmentalist?? Just LOL. Every time a SpaceX rocket goes up...then comes down....

 

[Achaios]

Ιn other news ETH rebounded and is trending upwards again.

I wonder when and if this constant rise of ETH will ever stop.

 

[silversea]

Ban Crypto Currency worldwide now! it has proved over and over again that there is no place for this crap in our society, this world is going to sh** because of cryptocurrencies.

 

[emmzo]

10% change isn't a crash.

He's just buying now, and will make another u-turn when done.

Agreed. I don`t know/care of the actual benefits for society of crypto, decentralization promised freedom, but it looks more and more like a carefully choreograph big transfer of wealth, from everybody else to the very rich, Musk and others, who control the ups and downs of this market.

 

[terzaerian]

Considering Tesla's system for accepting BTC was byzantine and confusing it's a small loss to the ecosystem. I appreciate the fire sale yesterday though.

Really the worse damage he's done is turned Dogecoin into his own personality cult.

 

[Geralt]

I wonder where are the crypto priests of this forum?

 

[FanboysGetPwned]

More financially viable to use cheap renewables and excess energy produced by the grid then to pay to burn fossil fuels?

 

[psycros]

More financially viable to use cheap renewables and excess energy produced by the grid then to pay to burn fossil fuels?

This is incomprehensible.

 

[FanboysGetPwned]

I said its more financially viable to use cheap renewables and excess energy produced by the grid rather then pay extra to burn fossil fuels.

 

[Stingy McDuck]

So this is the future of the economy? Coin values crashing whenever a dude says something on twitter? I think I'll stay with my banana republic, thanks.

 

[terzaerian]

So this is the future of the economy? Coin values crashing whenever a dude says something on twitter? I think I'll stay with my banana republic, thanks.

..He says, before five minutes later wondering aloud why gas and food are getting so expensive

 

[Geralt]

So this is the future of the economy? Coin values crashing whenever a dude says something on twitter? I think I'll stay with my banana republic, thanks.

Yes, this is the glory of the crapto.

 

[CommonSenseTech]

10% change isn't a crash.

A rapid 10% change downwards is indeed a crash, just as a rapid 10% jump up is a pop.