Musk Denies Bitcoin ‘Pump And Dump’“”And Says Tesla Will Resume Transactions Once This Mining Goal Is Reached

Musk Denies Bitcoin ‘Pump And Dump’“”And Says Tesla Will Resume Transactions Once This Mining Goal Is Reached

Share to Linkedin As the cryptocurrency market's weeks-long rut continues, Tesla's billionaire CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter Sunday afternoon to refute claims that he engaged in a bitcoin pump-and-dump scheme earlier this year and said the electric-vehicle company would once again invest in the world's largest cryptocurrency once its mining operations constitute a "reasonable" amount of clean energy usage. Elon Musk in March 2020. "This is not true," Musk said in response to a Cointelegraph article highlighting comments in which Magda Wierzycka, the CEO of financial services firm Sygnia, criticized Musk for bitcoin "price manipulation." According to Wierzycka, an anti-corruption activist who made the comments in a podcast released Wednesday, Musk announced Tesla's bitcoin investment on Twitter, then "pumped up the bitcoin price" by tweeting about it on social media and then "sold at the peak." "Tesla only sold ~10% of holdings to confirm [bitcoin] could be liquidated easily without moving [the] market," Musk added, referring to Tesla's first-quarter bitcoin sale that resulted in proceeds of $272 million after several tweets touting the cryptocurrency. In another big bitcoin pivot, Musk also said the company would "resume allowing bitcoin transactions" once there's confirmation that miners are using approximately 50% clean