By Jennifer Ugwueke
Founder of Tesla Inc. and second richest person in the world, Elon Musk has announced that his automaker, Tesla will not be accepting payment with the crypto-currency, Bitcoin anymore due to environmental concerns.
Soon after Elon posted this statement yesterday on his Twitter account with his handle, @elonmusk, Bitcoin slid as much as 15% to nearly $46,000 before recovering.
“Tesla has suspended vehicle purchases using Bitcoin. 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.
“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,” he said.
He further explained that although Tesla will not be selling any Bitcoin, they intend to use it as soon as the mining transitions to a more sustainable energy. He concluded by saying Tesla is also looking at other cryptocurrencies that uses 1% of Bitcoin’s energy.
“Tesla will not be selling any Bitcoin, and we intend to use it as soon as mining transitions to more sustainable energy. We are also looking at other cryptocurrencies that uses 1% of Bitcoin’s energy/transactions.” He said.
Tesla has suspended vehicle purchases using bitcoin. 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.
Cryptocurrency is a good idea on many levels and we believe it has a promising future, but this cannot comes as a great cost to the environment.
Tesla will not be selling any Bitcoin and we intend to use it for transactions as soon as mining transitions to more sustainable energy. We are also looking at other crypto currencies that use 1% of Bitcoin’s energy/transactions.