Bitcoin Tanks After Elon Musk Says Tesla Stops Accepting It Due To Carbon Energy Use

Bitcoin Tanks After Elon Musk Says Tesla Stops Accepting It Due To Carbon Energy Use

Elon Musk, who has become a volatile force in the cryptocurrency universe, said Tesla is no longer accepting Bitcoin as payment for purchases of its electric vehicles owing to the excessive amount of carbon-based energy it uses. Bitcoin plunged following his comments. "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 tweeted on Wednesday afternoon. "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." While Tesla isn't going to accept Bitcoin as payment, the company's billionaire CEO said it also won't be selling holdings in the cryptocurrency and still plans to use "it for transactions as soon as mining transitions to more sustainable energy." Bitcoin dropped 17% to $47, 256. 504 at 1:05 a. m. London time early Thursday. Mining its uses "more electricity than Argentina" according to recent BBC report because it needs vast amounts of computing power to continuously log and verify all transaction data to the bitcoin blockchain. The sudden move is a curious one since Tesla's recent $1. 5 billion Bitcoin investment