Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, refused to accept Bitcoin as payment because of the ties between cryptocurrency and fossil fuels. Bitcoin price fell by a huge margin after Elon Musk announced that his company won’t be taking Bitcoin as a method of payment because of its alleged ties to fossil fuels.
The environmental impact of this digital currency was discussed for several hours in a sparked-up debate on Twitter. Earlier users could purchase vehicles from Tesla through this cryptocurrency as a payment method. On the evening of Wednesday, Elon Musk tweeted that he is very concerned with the increasing fossil fuel usage for transactions and mining of this cryptocurrency.
Coal is the primary fossil fuel responsible for the transaction and mining of Bitcoin. It has the worst impact on our already failing environment. He also added that this cryptocurrency is no doubt a very good idea and he believes that it has one of the most promising futures ahead of it. However, he mentioned that this amount of environmental damage is concerning and cannot be avoided.
Elon Musk Still Strongly Believes In Bitcoin, But Not At Such A High Cost
According to the SEC filing in February, Tesla presently holds around $1.5 bn in cryptocurrency. Musk added that his company won’t be getting rid of this much cryptocurrency but it will be using it for other transactions once the mining of this cryptocurrency is done using sustainable energy. On Thursday, Elon tweeted that while he strongly believes in Bitcoin, the increasing usage of coal should be stopped immediately. Mining is a process by which computers of high power verifies many Bitcoin transactions by solving complex mathematical problems. This consumes huge amounts of coal-powered electricity.
