Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk tweeted for the second day in a row, criticizing Bitcoin for not being environmentally friendly and stopping the opening of Bitcoin for car purchases, causing Bitcoin’s market value to plummet in response.
On the 13th, Musk tweeted a graph of Bitcoin energy consumption saying, “What a crazy trend in energy consumption over the last few months.”
On the 12th, he also tweeted that Tesla would be suspending the use of bitcoin payments to buy its electric cars due to environmental concerns.
On the news, Bitcoin fell 13.38% in the past 24 hours to a provisional $47,728.51. Dogcoin, ethereum and the rest of the virtual currencies were similarly affected, diving hard across the board.
However, Musk emphasized that Tesla is not selling Bitcoin as a result, saying, “Wait until a more environmentally friendly mining method emerges before trading with Bitcoin, and will consider using other more environmentally friendly virtual currencies.”
Tesla bought $1.5 billion in bitcoin in the first quarter and subsequently sold about $272 million in assets, and operating bitcoin gave the company a profit of $101 million, according to Tesla’s latest financial report. Musk said he would not abandon investments in virtual currencies.
Musk’s fortune shrank by more than $20 billion this week as Tesla shares fell, though he remains the world’s 3rd richest billionaire.
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