After pumping the crypto currency, the Tesla CEO Elon Musk is now dumping on it. Musk said on Wednesday that the car company would no longer accept bitcoin to purchase its vehicles, citing concerns about the environmental impact of the cryptocurrency. We only have to wonder how the herd of Elon followers may be getting burnt from his “wishy-washy” announcements.
“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 said in a statement posted to his Twitter account.
Musk later added a chart based on data from the University of Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance showing what he called the cryptocurrnecy’s “insane” energy usage trend.
The announcement comes a little more than three months after Tesla first announced it would begin accepting bitcoin as payment. The company also said at the time that it had purchased $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin.
The value of bitcoin declined sharply after Musk’s tweet, dropping from about $54,700 per coin to as low as $46,000 before rebounding slightly.
Musk, one of the world’s richest people, said in the statement Wednesday that the company would not be selling any of its bitcoin and intends “to use it for transactions as soon as mining transitions to more sustainable energy.”
He added that the company is also looking at cryptocurrencies that use less energy.
Many can potentially speculate that Elon will have the solution to make crypto more energy efficient to offset this new enlightenment of it’s affect to the environment. What he’s followers must be wondering is was his oversight out of conveniences or simply honest lack of knowledge? Only he would know.
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