Elon Musk Says Tesla Will Likely Accept Bitcoin Again

[ad_1]

Elon Musk leaving the Justice Center in Wilmington, Delaware on July 13, 2021, Photo: Matt Rourke (AP)

Elon Musk seems to have changed his mind about Bitcoin. a second. The billionaire SpaceX founder has said that Tesla will likely accept bitcoin again in the future after abandoning the cryptocurrency due to environmental concerns.

“Bitcoin appears to be shifting a lot toward renewables,” Musk said without any evidence during a live discussion at a B Word conference with Twitter founder Jack Dorsey on Wednesday.

“I wanted to take extra care to confirm that the percentage of renewable energy use is likely to be 50% or higher, that there is a trend towards that number increasing, and if that is the case, Tesla will resume accepting bitcoin,” Musk continued.

“The answer is likely that Tesla will resume accepting bitcoin. Most likely,” Musk said.

Bitcoin surged more than $32,000 after Musk’s announcement, a highly anticipated result any time a billionaire comments on the world of fake digital money.

G/O Media may get commission

Tesla started accepting bitcoin in late March, only to reverse course less than two months later. Musk said at the time that he was concerned about the environmental impact of bitcoin, which requires a huge amount of energy to mine. But the environmental issues surrounding bitcoin have been known for years, and pessimists will likely conclude that Musk is merely trying to manipulate the price of bitcoin.

But it appears that Musk was ready to respond to the accusation, offering a curious confirmation during the live broadcast, claiming that he is not trying to lower the price of bitcoin at all.

“The three things I own outside of SpaceX and Tesla — and obviously Neuralink and Boring Company — are pretty much bitcoin, some ethereum, and some doge,” Musk said.

“If the price of bitcoin goes down, I lose money. I may pump, but I don’t dump,” the billionaire continued. “I definitely don’t believe in raising the price and selling or anything like that.”

Even as a Tesla stock owner and CEO, Musk will presumably lose a lot of money if the price of bitcoin drops, since the auto company revealed earlier this year that it had bought $1.5 billion worth of cryptocurrency.

“If I were purely financially motivated, I wouldn’t express that reservation about using bitcoin’s power,” Musk later said during the rapprochement while sounding very defensive.

Where does that leave Tesla and when will the company start accepting bitcoin again? Your guess is as good as ours. But we certainly expected Musk to return to the pro-Bitcoin camp.

.

[ad_2]