Electric car maker Tesla will stop accepting Bitcoin as a payment, CEO Elon Musk tweeted on Wednesday, citing environmental concerns, according to Euronews.
“We are concerned about rapid increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal, which has the worst emissions of any fuel,” Musk said on Twitter.
He added that cryptocurrency is a “good idea on many levels” but its promise cannot come at a “great cost to the environment.”.
Writing for CNN, Rishi Iyengar said Musk tweeted in late March that people “can now buy a Tesla with Bitcoin.”.
Tesla bought $1.5 billion in bitcoin early this year.
By the end of March, it was worth $2.5 billion Musk, who has in the past expressed skepticism about cryptocurrencies, said in an interview on social app Clubhouse earlier this year that he thinks bitcoin is on the verge of “getting broad acceptance by conventional finance people.”.
He said he should have bought the digital currency eight years ago.
Writing for ZDNet, Tiernan Ray said Tesla chief executive Elon Musk Wednesday evening tweeted that the company will stop accepting Bitcoin payments for purchase of Tesla vehicles, citing excessive energy consumption in the mining of the crypto-currency.
The announcement follows Tesla’s earnings announcement on April 26th during which the company had said it made a small profit on the crypto-currency in the quarter after it sold 10% of a $1.5 billion position it had amassed in Bitcoin.
Musk’s tweet was followed by a quick drop in the spot price of Bitcoin from $54,602.77 in U.S. dollars to $52.147.82.
Said Musk in a word-pasted graphic embedded in a tweet, 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.
Tesla will not be selling any Bitcoin and we intend to use it for transactions as soon as mining transitions to more sustainably energy.
Amenorhu kwaku is an author, internet marketer, and entrepreneur. He is the founder of SuccessValley, a network community for students and aspiring entrepreneurs. He is also the founder of Republik City News and Whoop, a news portal and a business directory.
