Aker ASA Considering Accepting Bitcoin as Payment; Elon Musk’s Remarks Change Nothing

Aker ASA, an industrial investment company, is open to the idea of accepting payment in Bitcoin, a decision in opposition of Elon Musk announcing this week that Tesla won’t be accepting BTC as payment for its car purchases. “Energy usage trend over past few months is insane,” said Musk about Bitcoin mining. Earlier this year, Oystein Olsen, Governor of the Central Bank of Norway, had also called Bitcoin “far too resource-intensive, far too costly, and most importantly, it doesn’t preserve stability.” But Aker ASA is unperturbed. “We’re curious about this technology,” Oyvind Eriksen, chief executive of Aker, said in an interview. That includes understanding how Bitcoin “will change behavior patterns and the markets we are in.” The firm isn’t reconfiguring its payments system just yet, but “things happen very quickly here,” Eriksen said. “I’m no stranger” to the idea of receiving payment in Bitcoin, he added. And Musk’s latest comments “haven’t changed anything,” Aker said. Founded in 1841, the Oslo stock exchange-listed company owned by billionaire Kjell Inge Roekke has ownership interests concentrated in oil and gas, renewable energy, and green technologies. In March, the company announced that they would use Bitcoin as a treasury asset and be long-term HODLers. Roekke also created a Bitcoin invited company Seetee AS and injected 500 million kroner ($60 million) in it. “Bit­coin may still go to zero. But it can also be­come the core of a new mon­e­tary ar­chi­tec­ture. If so, one bit­coin may be worth mil­lions of dollars,” said Roekke at the time. Now, they are interested in accepting BTC as payment.