Elon Musk: Tesla To Accept Bitcoin Again, If Miners Confirm 50% Clean Energy Use
Tesla CEO Elon Musk: If there is “confirmation of reasonable (about 50%) clean energy usage by miners with positive future trend,” the electric car maker Tesla will start accepting bitcoin for payments again.
Tesla Could Resume Accepting Bitcoin, if…
On Sunday Tesla CEO Elon Musk talked about when Tesla will resume accepting bitcoin for payments. In response to Sygnia CEO’s accusation of him being influential individual manipulating the market, he wrote:
This is inaccurate. Tesla only sold ~10% of holdings to confirm BTC could be liquidated easily without moving market.
When there’s confirmation of reasonable (~50%) clean energy usage by miners with positive future trend, Tesla will resume allowing Bitcoin transactions.
“When there’s confirmation of reasonable (~50%) clean energy usage by miners with positive future trend, Tesla will resume allowing Bitcoin transactions.”
The car manufacturer started accepting BTC for car payments in March. Elon Musk back then confirmed that any bitcoin the company receives will not be converted into fiat currencies. This followed the company’s filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) declaring that it had purchased bitcoin worth $1.5 billion. In April, its bitcoin investment was worth $2.5 billion.
However, in May, Tesla suspended accepting bitcoin as a payment option, citing environmental issues. Musk then along with Michael Saylor met with North American bitcoin miners to discuss using renewable energy in mining. As a follow up of the meeting Bitcoin Mining Council was created. Nonetheless, Musk confirmed that Tesla did not sell any bitcoins due to environmental concerns.
In fact, there was speculation that Tesla shareholders pressured Musk to drop BTC payment due to main stream media’s rising ‘concern’ over Bitcoin’s environmental impact. Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary commented the matter earlier:
“Elon was pressured, I believe, by the shareholders of Tesla to speak out about this because they live with sustainability committees, and they’re not on the side with Bitcoin being used as a currency to buy Tesla cars. And so they probably pressured him to make the statement he made.”
Tesla sold some of it’s Bitcoin holdings during the first quarter of this year, however, before the mining issues surfaced. During Tesla’s Q1 2021 earnings announcement, Master of Coin Zachary Kirkhorn revealed that the company trimmed its BTC position by 10%. Musk explained at the time that the BTC sale was “essentially to prove liquidity of bitcoin as an alternative to holding cash on balance sheet.”
Musk’s Sunday tweet was in response to allegations cited in a Cointelegraph article. Sygnia CEO Magda Wierzycka alleged that the Tesla ‘technoking’ had manipulated the bitcoin market and the SEC should investigate him. The South African billionaire believes that Musk knowingly pumped bitcoin with the announcement that Tesla was going to accept BTC and then “sold a big part of his exposure at the peak.”
However, the Tesla CEO denied the allegations. “This is inaccurate,” he tweeted, reiterating his earlier explanation of why Tesla sold some bitcoins:
“Tesla only sold ~10% of holdings to confirm BTC could be liquidated easily without moving market.”
