Elon Musk definitely has a stranglehold on the cryptocurrency market. A simple tweet can make a crypto’s worth skyrocket or plummet. When the Tesla CEO announced people can buy vehicles with Bitcoin, the price of the cryptocurrency jumped almost 20% back in early February. Now, Musk tweeted out that Tesla will no longer be accepting Bitcoin as a means to purchase a vehicle, citing concerns over the use of fossil fuels over Bitcoin mining.
“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. “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.”
After news of this, the price of Bitcoin dropped 5%, and eventually 12%, even dropping back to $46,000 a share for a brief moment.
In a study conducted by the University of Cambridge, it was found that the energy used to perform the intensive computer calculations to verify transactions of Bitcoin was the equivalent to the amount of energy used in the Netherlands in 2019. This is a conflict of interest with Tesla as the company commits itself to use sustainable energy.
Back in February, Musk announced that Tesla had bought $1.5 billion shares of Bitcoin, causing the price to surge. They then sold $272 million worth of the crypto. In the time since then, Elon has been called the “Dogefather” after causing Dogecoin, invaluable crypto based on a meme, to skyrocket in value.
Recently, Elon hosted SNL and during the Weekend Update, basically called Dogecoin a “hustle,” causing the value of the coin to plummet.
