Musk Sends Bitcoin Tumbling With Shock U-Turn on Payments

Musk Sends Bitcoin Tumbling With Shock U-Turn on Payments

(Bloomberg) -- Tesla Inc.’s Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said the electric-vehicle manufacturer is suspending purchases with Bitcoin, triggering a slide in the digital currency.

In a post on Twitter Wednesday, Musk cited concerns about “rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions,” while signaling that Tesla might accept other cryptocurrencies if they are much less energy intensive. He also said the company won’t be selling any of the Bitcoin it holds.

The largest cryptocurrency dropped as much as 15% in Asian trading, sliding below $50,000, before paring some of the drop. It was down about 8% to $50,190 as of 10:53 a.m. in Tokyo. The were reports of outages at digital-token exchanges as people rushed to sell.