Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla
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The price of Bitcoin has fallen after a 2021 rally fueled by Elon Musk, falling 70% from its all-time high and wiping $2 trillion from the broader cryptocurrency market, with fears growing for the future. Market technology
Today, Bitcoin has reportedly reached a milestone in the renewable energy space that Musk says will force Tesla to start accepting Bitcoin as payment, just as Musk has quietly begun turning X into a payments powerhouse.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk's decision to halt Bitcoin payments has led to a decline in Bitcoin prices ... [+]
“Bitcoin is changing the energy story,” Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Jamie Coates said of the mining sector.
“Lower emissions combined with higher hashrates can only mean one thing. Bitcoin mining is putting more sustainable energy into its mix,” Coates said, pointing to a model by renewable energy investor Daniel Batten that suggests sustainable energy currently accounts for 53 % of Bitcoin's total energy consumption.
In June 2021, Musk halted Tesla payments in bitcoin, saying he would restart miners when their clean energy consumption reached about 50%.
“Once future miners confirm reasonable use of clean energy (~50%), Tesla will start allowing Bitcoin transactions,” Musk tweeted at the time.
In February 2021, Tesla surprised the market by announcing that it had purchased $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin and would begin accepting Bitcoin as payment. However, Bitcoin payments continued until mid-May, with Musk citing Bitcoin's high energy consumption.
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Bitcoin prices have fluctuated significantly in recent years, prompting , CEO of Tesla, to … [+]
“We are concerned about the rapid increase in the use of fossil fuels in Bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal, which is the highest emitting fuel,” Musk said at the time.
Since then, Musk appears to have soured on bitcoin by selling most of Tesla's bitcoins, though he has a closer relationship with Dogecoin, a meme-based bitcoin competitor.
A leak last month suggested that Musk might turn X into an “updated version of PayPal” after purchasing the social network last year, sparking speculation that X could follow PayPal in offering support for bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.
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