After Musk says Tesla will return to accepting Bitcoin as a form of payment, the price of cryptocurrency rises 8% in 24 hours.
Bitcoin back on Tesla?
It appears that the discussion between Elon Musk miners and Bitcoin (BTC) to discuss the issue of clean energy in the cryptocurrency mining, such as “Green Bitcoin“, appears to be having positive effects.
Last Sunday (13) the billionaire spoke again about Tesla’s plans with virtual currencies and used his Twitter to claim that the company intends to return to accept Bitcoin as a form of payment as soon as mining changes to a more sustainable energy.
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, the 2nd (@elonmusk) June 13, 2021
Musk hadn’t talked about cryptocurrencies for over a week. His last post about the subject was on June 5th. That week, a video from the hacker group Anonymous declared war on the billionaire.
BTC on the rise
Just before Musk made the post, Bitcoin was operating at a high of over $1,000, and after posting, it continued to climb to around $37,600. The high on the day was 8%.
The following day (14), the digital currency posted strong gains and surpassed $39,000. Bitcoin operated at US$ 40,529.23, up 12.61% from the previous day.
Bitcoin, Musk and the environment
On May 12th, Elon Musk used his Twitter to announce that Tesla will no longer accept Bitcoin as a form of payment.
According to the billionaire, cryptocurrency mining would be highly polluting to the environment. In addition, he claimed that while the digital asset “is a good idea, it can’t have a big cost to the environment”.
However, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX closed his publication by saying that his company intends to return to accepting the currency “as soon as mining makes the transition to more sustainable energy”.
Tesla & Bitcoin pic.twitter.com/YSswJmVZhP
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 12, 2021
Musk is known for his big speeches on behalf of the environment – a great strategy for selling your electric cars. So, although the relationship between the billionaire and Bitcoin was brief, once Tesla started accepting BTC in March of this year, it made sense so far.
However, in February, the billionaire had entered a reverse carbon credit market. At the time, his automaker bought $1.5 billion worth of BTC, something that drew criticism from environmentalists and crypto industry experts.
Elon Musk: A cryptocurrency handler?
In reality, the conditions for Tesla to return to accepting BTC as a form of payment were published shortly after Musk was accused by Sygnia CEO Magda Wierzycka of manipulating the cryptocurrency market.
According to Wierzycka, Musk used his influence to deliberately manipulate the Bitcoin price with statements on Twitter, including those mentioning Tesla’s $1.5 billion BTC purchase. Afterwards, the billionaire would have liquidated a significant part of his position in the digital currency.
“Bitcoin volatility was an unexpected consequence of what I would call market manipulation by Elon Musk”, Wierzycka said in an interview with Money Show. “If it were a listed company, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) would open an investigation and punish it severely. What we see is Bitcoin price manipulation by one of the most powerful people in the world”.
Musk dismissed Wierzycka’s accusation, claiming that “Tesla only sold about 10% of its assets to confirm that Bitcoin could be easily liquidated without market fluctuations”.
“Once there is confirmation of acceptable use of clean energy (~50%) by miners with a positive future trend, Tesla will again allow Bitcoin transactions”, Musk said.
Did you see?
Elon Musk is catching flak again, but what’s it for this time? Sygnia CEO Magda Wierzycka lambasted him saying “What we have seen with Bitcoin is price manipulation by one very powerful and influential individual.” https://t.co/W5WYgGnKPR
— Cointelegraph (@Cointelegraph) June 13, 2021
It is worth remembering that not only the CEO of Sygnia, but many individuals criticize Musk for allegedly manipulating the price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, such as DOGE, through his Twitter posts and public appearance on the Saturday Night Live TV show – the CEO Tesla’s appeared as a character called “The Dogefather” and referred to the token as “a mess.” Also, last week, Musk mentioned the CumRocket project (CUMMIES) in a series of tweets that likely pushed the price of the token up by 366%, from $0.06 to $0.28.
BTC today price
After Musk’s tweet, Bitcoin seems to be slowly recovering.
The cryptocurrency has finally broken the $30,000 mark and is priced at $40,237.40.
Will BTC ever hit its historic (ATH) mark of $65,000 again?
