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SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Bitcoin hit a two-week peak at just under $ 40,000 on Monday, after another weekend reacting to tweets from Tesla boss Elon Musk, who fended off criticism of his influence on the market and said Tesla had sold bitcoin but could resume transactions using it.
Bitcoin has been on Musks’ eyes for months since Tesla announced a $ 1.5 billion bitcoin purchase in February and said it would take cryptocurrency as payment. He later said the electric car maker would not accept bitcoin over concerns over how mining for currency requires high energy consumption and contributes to climate change.
When there is confirmation of reasonable (around 50%) clean energy use by miners with a positive future trend, Tesla will resume allowing Bitcoin transactions, Musk said on Twitter on Sunday.
Bitcoin rose more than 9% after this post, surpassing its 20-day moving average, and it climbed a little further in Asia to reach $ 39,838.92.
The market had gone through another round of corrections over the weekend … until Elon Musks’ tweet to accept BTC again for Tesla purchases changed sentiment, said Bobby Ong, co-founder from the CoinGecko crypto analysis website.
He said the market was also supported by the software company and Bitcoin’s main funder, MicroStrategy, which raised half a billion dollars to buy bitcoin.
Bitcoin is up around 33% this year, but has collapsed after a record spike above $ 60,000 amid a regulatory crackdown in China and Musks’ seemingly hesitant enthusiasm for it. Telsa shares are down about 30% since the company bought bitcoin.
Musks’ tweet was made in response to an article based on remarks by Magda Wierzycka, director of cybersecurity firm Syngia, who, in a radio interview last week, accused him of price manipulation and sale of a large part of its exhibition.
This is incorrect, Musk said. Tesla only sold around 10% of the holdings to confirm that BTC could be liquidated easily without moving the market.
Musk had tweeted in May that Tesla would not sell any bitcoin and sell no bitcoin, but investors are eagerly awaiting Tesla’s next earnings update – scheduled for next month – for any disclosure of any changes in his position.
Musk took issue with the vast computational power required to process bitcoin transactions, and in early June posted messages appearing to bemoan a break with bitcoin.
Other cryptocurrencies were flat after the weekend’s gains, with Ether at $ 2,491 and Musk’s darling dogecoin buying around 32 US cents on the Binance crypto exchange.
Reporting by Tom Westbrook; Editing by Jacqueline Wong
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