Elon Musk Crashes Bitcoin With Tesla News

Bitcoin prices fell as much as 14% after a Wednesday tweet from Elon Musk with big news: Tesla will no longer accept Bitcoin payments. "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," his statement said, explaining that Tesla is planning to start accepting Bitcoin again when a more sustainable energy source can be used for mining. The company is also looking at other cryptocurrencies that use less energy per transaction, Musk said. "Cryptocurrency is a good idea on many levels and we believe it has a promising future," he wrote, "but this cannot come at great cost to the environment." The company had only recently begun accepting BTC payments.

Tesla stock also dropped immediately following the announcement, MarketWatch reports. As the Guardian explains, bitcoin mining involves "high-powered computers compet[ing] against other machines to solve complex mathematical puzzles," a process that requires a lot of energy—in fact, about the same amount per year that the Netherlands used in 2019. Tesla bought $1.5 billion in bitcoin in February, and Musk said it will not be selling any. Per Benzinga, popular blogger and Barstool Sports founder David Portnoy was not having Musk's reversal. "The same guy’s been pulling the levers like he’s the Wizard of Oz on crypto and everyone following his every move," he said in a video posted to Twitter. "He’s sending Dogecoin up, he’s sending bitcoin down." (More Elon Musk stories.)