In a tweet that announced that Bitcoin will no longer be used to buy Tesla cars, Elon Musk crashed the popular cryptocurrency. The Chief Executive Officer of one of the worlds leading electric vehicle companies sighted environmental reasons for stopping Bitcoin as a means of payment for Tesla cars.
Bitcoin uses up as much electricity annually as the Netherlands, according to one estimate. All that energy comes with a huge carbon footprint. And there’s no simple fix because the blockchain that the cryptocurrency is built on is purposely energy inefficient. That clashes with Tesla’s mission to “accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.”
Musk also said that Tesla will no longer sell any more of the $1.5 billion stash load of bitcoin it purchased earlier this year. Tesla sold some of that bitcoin in the first quarter of 2021, which wound up helping pad the company’s quarterly profit figures.
Tesla indicated that it would resume accepting bitcoin (and would consider selling more of it) once the process of mining bitcoin “transitions to more sustainable energy,” according to the statement. Musk pointed out that
“Cryptocurrency is a good idea on many levels and we believe it has a promising future, but this cannot come at a great cost to the environment,” He went to say “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 price of Bitcoin dipped after the announcement. Mr. Musk also said on Wednesday that Tesla was “looking at other cryptocurrencies” that use a fraction of the energy consumed by Bitcoin.
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