Elon Musk announced via a series of tweets on Wednesday that his electric car company, Tesla, will no longer accept bitcoin as payment due to the environmental impact of mining cryptocurrency:
Elon Musk announced Wednesday that Tesla would no longer accept bitcoin as payment: “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." https://t.co/oLbfCxZt4I
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) May 13, 2021
Musk wrote, “We are concerned about rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining” and the use of cryptocurrency “cannot come at great cost to the environment”:
Tesla & Bitcoin pic.twitter.com/YSswJmVZhP
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 12, 2021
He then tweeted out a chart showing the energy usage behind crypto mining:
Energy usage trend over past few months is insane https://t.co/E6o9s87trw pic.twitter.com/bmv9wotwKe
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 13, 2021
First of all, does anyone believe him?
blatantly sketchy lol
you don’t run a company directly concerned with energy usage & the future of the environment without thoroughly checking this before adding bitcoin to your balance sheet
give me a fuckin break https://t.co/8t96hlpKur
— ⚔️ MAREN ⚔️ (@marenaltman) May 13, 2021
And everything he says can also be said about the electric vehicle industry and how it’s powered by traditional mining of metals out of the Earth:
Pssst. No one tell Musk about lithium. Or where the electricity originates for charging it. Or how batteries are made. Or disposed. Or …
Musk: No more Bitcoin purchases of Teslas over environmental impact of … crypto-mining?https://t.co/tQyR52Lxhx pic.twitter.com/ifDQrL2Gjl
— Ed Morrissey (@EdMorrissey) May 13, 2021
What’s the carbon footprint of his space program, too?
Not to mention, uh, SHOOTING ROCKETSHIPS INTO SPACE
— Stop scolding me, I'm vaccinated (@jtLOL) May 13, 2021
As you might expect, markets reacted negatively to Musk’s announcement:
Tesla stock, bitcoin price drop after Elon Musk halts car sales with crypto https://t.co/NWCAudIZQy
— MarketWatch (@MarketWatch) May 12, 2021
In chart form:
The first Elon tweet caused a very sharp $BTC dip from ~$55k to ~$45k … the second Elon tweet seems to have had a much smaller impact.
Tl;dr technical chart analysis proves that spaghetti hands plebs were fleeced & a big chunk of #bitcoin changed hands back to diamond Chad's pic.twitter.com/rhYb7xeIep
— John Lilic ₿ Ξ ∞ (@JohnLilic) May 13, 2021
Or maybe he’s helping?
Looks like @elonmusk threw @SecYellen and Gary Gensler a bone by deflating crypto without a single new enforcement action or regulation $BTC
— Charles Gasparino (@CGasparino) May 13, 2021
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