[ad_1]
Marco Bello / Wayne McNamee / Getty Images
Bitcoin traded above $39,000 for a second day on Monday after Elon Musk on Twitter accepted Tesla to pay back in the cryptocurrency once mining takes place with cleaner energy.
“When there is confirmation of reasonable use of clean energy (~50%) by miners with a positive future trend, Tesla will resume allowing bitcoin transactions,” the billionaire said in a tweet.
He was responding to a Cointelegraph report citing South African billionaire businesswoman Magda Wirzyka and CEO of asset manager Sygnia that Musk’s tweets related to bitcoin should have triggered a regulatory investigation.
According to Wierzycka, Musk deliberately injected bitcoin’s value and then sold a portion of his exposure at its peak. But the Tesla chief disputed this claim, saying, “Tesla only sold about 10% of its holdings to confirm that BTC can easily be liquidated without moving the market.”
@elonmusk/Twitter
Bitcoin was last trading 11% higher around $39,530 on Monday as of 3:20AM ET, and it is up 36% so far this year.
“The charts point to consolidation followed by a rally through $41,000 targeting further gains to around $44,000,” said Jeffrey Haley, chief market analyst at OANDA.
Musk revealed in February that his electric car company had invested $1.5 billion in bitcoin and that it would begin accepting it as payment for its cars. Barely three months later, Tesla made a detour and stopped paying in Bitcoin due to the energy intensity of the mining process.
“We are concerned about the rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels in bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal, which has the worst emissions of any fuel,” Musk said in a tweet at the time.
It is not yet clear how Musk will collect data to assess bitcoin’s use of clean energy. But he previously suggested that the cryptocurrency could rid itself of its negative environmental profile if major miners prove they are using green energy by publishing audited data on the renewable energy sources used.
Read More: Founders of Leading Crypto Broker Lay Out Thesis Why Ether Looks ‘Too Cheap’ While Providing a More Conservative Case for Bitcoin — And Two ETH Rivals Share to Watch
[ad_2]
Picture Credit!