Bitcoin rocked by Elon Musk’s dramatic Tesla announcement
Tesla boss Elon Musk has suddenly declared the electric car manufacturer will be suspending the option to buy his vehicles with Bitcoin over the cryptocurrency’s “environmental concerns”.
In a dramatic announcement, the 49-year-old entrepreneur posted on Twitter that Tesla was worried about the impact on fossil fuels that Bitcoin mining was having.
The sharp turnaround of sentiment from Musk’s previous narrative of persistently promoting crypto on Twitter took the markets by storm and sent Bitcoin (BTC) tumbling from a promising level of $57,000 to an alarming $52k.
“Tesla has suspended vehicle purchases using Bitcoin,” the announcement said.
“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.”
The statement then praised the use case for crypto, but suggested Tesla’s stance on digital assets would have a long-term impact.
“Cryptocurrency is a good idea on many levels and we believe it has a promising future, but this cannot come as great cost to the environment,” it added.
“Tesla will not be selling any Bitcoin and we intend to use it for transactions as soon as mining transitions to more suitable energy.
“We are also looking at other cryptocurrencies that use <1% of Bitcoin’s energy/transaction.”
The remarkable and out-of-the-blue declaration is in stark contrast to Musk’s previous narrative on cryptocurrency.
Only five days ago he guest-hosted Saturday Night Live where he plugged Dogecoin – a project he has shamelessly pushed, as well as Bitcoin, on Twitter.