coinnounce.com
Bitcoin’s price surged over 10% on Sunday evening stateside after Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the electric vehicle maker could accept bitcoin transactions again in the future. At the time of writing, bitcoin is trading at $39,340, 12% up in the last 24 hours. Since the start of the year, the leading cryptocurrency has surged more than 30%, though its current price is way off the all-time high of $64,829.14 hit in April.
Elon Musk says Tesla will resume bitcoin transactions once miners use reasonable green energy.
Elon Musk tweeted that Tesla would resume allowing bitcoin transactions “when there’s confirmation of reasonable (~50%) clean energy usage by miners with the positive future trend.” Earlier, Teslas had halted car purchases with bitcoin in mid-May, citing concerns over the climate impact of cryptocurrency mining. It seems like Musk’s stance on bitcoin has been inconsistent lately. Earlier, the tech billionaire had upset the crypto community when he said bitcoin is highly centralized and is controlled by a few large mining companies.
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 mining comes under scrutiny for environmental concerns.
The environmental impact of bitcoin mining has come under intense scrutiny. Bitcoin mining requires massive amounts of energy to fuel powerful computers resulting in more carbon emissions. According to the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, Bitcoin mining consumes more energy than entire countries such as Finland and Belgium. However, more and more bitcoin miners are turning to clean energy to fuel powerful computers. As reported earlier, El Salvador has officially authorized bitcoin as legal tender, and the President also revealed that they would be using volcano-powered energy for bitcoin mining in the central American country.