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Elon Musk suggests that Tesla could go back to accepting bitcoin (BTC) in payments; cryptocurrency price returns to US$ 40 thousand
Bitcoin (BTC) experienced a strong increase this Tuesday (15), surpassing US$ 40 thousand for the first time in almost a month. The move came after Tesla CEO Elon Musk made a positive comment about the cryptocurrency on Twitter and suggested that his electric car company could return to accepting the asset as payment.
According to the CoinDesk index, bitcoin has now traded for as much as $41,000, its highest price since the entire cryptocurrency market tumbled in the second half of May after China announced new bans on digital currency transactions and services . At the time, the asset depreciated by 30% in just 24 hours. Since then, bitcoin has not crossed the $40,000 band again.
Musk went to Twitter to respond to a post from the cryptocurrency news site CoinTelegraph. He said Tesla sold 10% of its digital asset reserves to "confirm that the BTC could be liquidated quickly without moving the market." That news had already reverberated in late April, when the electric car company revealed in its quarterly financial report that it had profited $100 million from the cryptocurrency.
But what stood out in Musk's most recent speech about bitcoin was the suggestion that Tesla could return to accepting the asset as a form of payment for its vehicles if its mining is found to be using at least half of clean energy. of its operations. “Once there is confirmation of reasonable use of clean energy (~50%) by miners with a positive future trend, Tesla will again allow Bitcoin transactions,” Musk said on Sunday afternoon.
Tesla started investing in bitcoin in January
The electric car company began accepting the cryptocurrency in late March, just over a month after it was revealed to have purchased $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin in January. At the time, Tesla was seen as the main institutional investor in the digital asset, which legitimized the currency as a true investment option for many other companies.
However, the company came under severe criticism for defending the environment and the use of clean energy, but supporting such a polluting cryptocurrency. Currently, one of the main arguments against the asset is that its mining consumes a lot of electricity from coal plants in China. In this way, its high carbon footprint has become the target of criticism from Elon Musk himself.
“Cryptocurrency is a good idea in many ways and we believe it has a promising future, but it cannot come at a great cost to the environment. Tesla will not sell any bitcoin and we plan to use it for transactions once mining moves to more sustainable energy. We're also looking at other cryptocurrencies that use less than 1% of bitcoin's energy per transaction,” Musk said on Twitter in justifying Tesla's decision to no longer accept digital currency in mid-May.
