Musk says SpaceX owns bitcoin, Tesla should start accepting it again

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Popular cryptocurrencies edged up slightly on Wednesday, after Elon Musk first revealed that his private rocket company SpaceX holds bitcoin and that Tesla would “most likely” resume accepting it as payment for its electric cars.

Musk described his cryptocurrency investments during a panel at “The B Word” online conference hosted by the Crypto Council for Innovation, alongside Jack Dorsey, chief executive of Twitter and payments group Square, and Managing Director of Ark Invest Cathie Wood.

Musk said he personally owns bitcoin, ethereum, and more specialized dogecoin, while two of his companies, SpaceX and Tesla, were bitcoin holders – and will remain so.

“We don’t sell any bitcoin, and I personally don’t sell anything,” he said. “I would like to see bitcoin succeed.”

Responding to critics who accuse him of encouraging and profiting from wild swings in crypto prices with bold statements on Twitter, where he has more than 58 million followers, Musk reiterated his commitment to the digital token: “If the price of Bitcoin goes down, I lose money. I could pump, but I don’t empty, ”he said.

Bitcoin rose more than 5% to $ 31,600, while ethereum rose more than 7% to $ 1,900.

During Wednesday’s discussion, Musk, Dorsey and Woods also spoke about the challenges of scaling bitcoin, as well as its environmental impact.

Bitcoin and other digital coins saw a dizzying increase from December to early this year, but much of those gains have been erased recently as regulators surround the freewheeling market.

In February, bitcoin soared after Musk revealed that Tesla had invested $ 1.5 billion of its reserves in cryptocurrency and said the company planned to accept cryptocurrency payments for its. electric cars. However, it turned the tide months later in May, citing environmental concerns about the mechanism used to validate bitcoin transactions, known as bitcoin mining.

Critics of Bitcoin have criticized the use of fossil fuels as an energy source for the energy-hungry currency. But Musk on Wednesday recommended that hydroelectric, geothermal or nuclear power be used more in the future, and even proposed that one day futuristic “space heating” could be used to mine cryptocurrencies.

“It looks like bitcoin is turning more to renewables and it looks like a lot of heavy-duty coal-fired power plants have been shut down, especially in China,” Musk said, adding that he intended to confirm that ‘At least 50 percent 100 of the energy consumption for bitcoin mining was renewable.

“There is a tendency to increase this number. If that were the case, Tesla would start accepting bitcoin again, ”he said.

Sporting a tie-dye t-shirt and a long beard, Dorsey said his hope for bitcoin was “that it will create world peace.” Last week, he announced that Square was launching a platform for developers to create bitcoin-based “decentralized finance” projects, complex cryptocurrency-denominated financial products that cut out traditional middlemen.

Meanwhile, Woods urged companies to add bitcoin to their balance sheets, arguing it would act as “a hedge against inflation.”

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