On May 13th, Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted that the electric vehicle maker would suspend car purchases using bitcoin, citing environmental concerns.
The price of the world’s largest cryptocurrency dropped from around $54,700 to below $47,000. Although after that it has managed to go back above $50,000 within a few hours. But the obstructive news for Btc is that Tesla won’t accept BTC as payment. The digital currency is still 30% higher than before Tesla’s February announcement.
On Thursday when Musk said that, the value of the whole cryptocurrency market stood at around $2.43 trillion, according to data from Coinmarketcap.com. After that the market capitalization had dropped to around $2.06 trillion, wiping off around $365.85 billion.
Bitcoin- Reason behind Mask’s decision-
In his tweet, Mask mentioned the reason behind his decision. Let’s see some data, we know that Bitcoin is not issued by a single entity like a central bank from any country. Instead, it is maintained by a network of so-called “miners.” And they use purpose-built computers that require a lot of energy to solve critical mathematical perplexing puzzles in order for bitcoin transactions to go through.
Read more: How to protect yourself from cyber crime?
If we see the data from the University of Cambridge and the International Energy Agency, at current rates, bitcoin mining devours about the same amount of energy annually as the Netherlands did in 2019.
We know that environmental matters are an incredibly sensitive subject right now. A few days ago New Zealand became the first country to introduce the Environment law. With U.K. other countries are also talking about it. Tesla’s move might serve as a wake-up call to businesses and consumers using bitcoin.
Other Crypto’s such as Ether, XPR was also sharply lower. We all know How much Elon has an influence on cryptocurrency. He helped the bitcoin price climb to over $60,000 earlier this year with his support.
There is an important line from his tweet to notice. He added “We are also looking at other cryptocurrencies that use <1% of bitcoin’s energy/transaction,” There is a pole going on in his Twitter handle where he is asking should Tesla accept Doge as payment.