Bitcoin is a decentralised mode of currency that is not authorised by any government or banking authority
In March 2021, Tesla CEO Elon Musk had announced on Twitter that the carmaker would accept the most popular and largest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin as a mode of payment to purchase electric vehicles. The option to make payments using Bitcoin was only possible in the United States at the time; however, Elon Musk had announced that Tesla was working on means to expand the payment method to other countries as well. Less than two months after making this announcement, Mr Musk posted a tweet in May stating that Tesla will no longer accept Bitcoin as a mode of payment. Mr Musk cited climate change as the main reason behind the company’s decision to discontinue accepting the cryptocurrency.
Bitcoin mining has been deemed harmful by environmentalists as the consumption of power and electricity is excessive. There have been questions if the electricity has been sourced from renewable sources or fossil fuels. These concerns prompted Mr Musk to officially announce Tesla’s withdrawal from accepting Bitcoin.
However, recently during the B Word cryptocurrency conference, Mr Musk said that Tesla would most “likely” resume acceptance of Bitcoin. In June, he confirmed through a tweet that if Bitcoin mining was more eco-friendly then Tesla would once again begin to accept the cryptocurrency as payment. “When there’s confirmation of reasonable (~50%) clean energy usage by miners with a positive future trend, Tesla will resume allowing Bitcoin transactions,” Mr Musk tweeted.
This is inaccurate. Tesla only sold ~10% of holdings to confirm BTC could be liquidated easily without moving market.
When there’s confirmation of reasonable (~50%) clean energy usage by miners with positive future trend, Tesla will resume allowing Bitcoin transactions.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 13, 2021
Bitcoin is a decentralised mode of currency that is not authorised by any government or banking authority. It operates on a blockchain network that stores information in a public ledger relating to all transactions made using the cryptocurrency. In order to have new Bitcoin circulated into the system, a process called mining is used. The people who add new Bitcoins to the public ledger on the blockchain are referred to as miners.
