Tesla Stops Accepting Bitcoin: Price Slumps $3,000 In Response
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said that the electric vehicle manufacturing company will no longer be accepting bitcoin payment for its vehicles.
- In a tweet on Wednesday (May 12, 2021), Elon Musk said that Tesla has suspended bitcoin payment for its electric vehicles, citing bitcoin’s energy consumption as the reason.
- Tesla first announced that it bought $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin back in February 2021. The company hinted that it would start accepting BTC as payment for its products.
- Later in March, the car manufacturer revealed that U.S. customers could pay for a Tesla with bitcoin.
- Tesla accepting bitcoin drew significant criticism from environmental conservationists who stated that the move was antithetical to Tesla’s apparent stance on managing global emissions.
- Meanwhile, there has been no clear consensus on Bitcoin’s energy usage, although some critics like to espouse the ocean boiling narrative.
- Following Musk’s tweet, the price of bitcoin took an immediate hit, shedding $3,000 in less than 15 minutes. Bitcoin was trading at nearly $55K and plunged below $52K in a matter of minutes following Musk’s tweet.
“Tesla will not be selling any Bitcoin and we intend to use it for transactions as soon as mining transitions to more sustainable energy,” Musk tweeted, adding:
“We are also looking at other cryptocurrencies that use <1% of Bitcoin’s transaction/energy.”
- A recent poll conducted by the tech billionaire on Twitter about whether Tesla should accept dogecoin, showed that 78% of 3.9 million responses supported support for DOGE payments.
- But if Elon Musk’s reason is anything to be considered, then dogecoin might suffer the same fate as bitcoin, since it is also uses proof-of-work (POW) consensus.
