Bitcoin plummeted on Thursday after a tweet from Tesla CEO Elon Musk stating that his company would not accept payments with the cryptocurrency, as its production requires a large consumption of fossil fuels.
Musk tweeted his concerns about “the rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels in mining and Bitcoin transactions,” but hinted that Tesla could accept other cryptocurrencies as payment, as long as they were less energy-intensive. He clarified that his company will not sell the Bitcoins it owns.
It should be noted that Musk had boosted the price of Bitcoin after Tesla announced in February that it had bought $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin and that it intended to accept the digital currency as payment.
However, after today’s reports, Bitcoin fell as much as 15%, falling to $46.000, with massive sales currently causing shortages in some digital currency exchanges.
The issue of energy consumption for Bitcoin production was highlighted in a recent Citigroup report, which documented that Bitcoin mining consumes 66 times more electricity than it did in 2015.
