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Electric car manufacturing company Tesla will no longer accept Bitcoin for car purchases. CEO Elon Musk said that Tesla is looking to accept only more energy-efficient cryptocurrencies. Tesla would still retain its Bitcoin holdings with the plan to use the cryptocurrency as soon as mining transitions to more sustainable energy sources.
Tesla Will No Longer Accept Bitcoin as Payments
In February, Tesla made headlines that it had bought $1.5 billion of Bitcoin, before accepting it as payment for cars in March, driving a roughly 20% surge in the cryptocurrency.
At the time Tesla announced on purchasing Bitcoin, debates have been circulating around the way how Bitcoin is “mined” using vast amounts of electricity generated with fossil fuels.
Adding to the point, Musk said on May 13 that the use of “coal, which has the worst emissions of any fuel.”
He did say that he remained a strong believer in cryptocurrencies, but not at the cost to the environment while announcing that Tesla will no longer accept Bitcoin as payments due to environmental concerns and will be looking to accept energy-efficient cryptocurrencies:
“Cryptocurrency is a good idea on many levels, and we believe it has a promising future, but this cannot come at great cost to the environment. We are also looking at other cryptocurrencies that use <1% of bitcoin’s energy/transaction.”
XRP Makes the Best Case for Sustainable Cryptocurrencies
Musk’s announcement sent much of the crypto community into a frenzy of speculation as to which cryptocurrencies Tesla might be looking to accept, with some speculating that it could either be ETH or XRP.
In response to Musk’s tweet, Ripple attorney, John Deaton said that the Tesla CEO has just handed “the best ad campaign” to the XRP cryptocurrency.
Whatever ruin think of @elonmusk, he just handed @Ripple @bgarlinghouse @chrislarsensf @JoelKatz and @s_alderoty the best Ad campaign for #XRP on a silver platter.
I know they’ve been making the “energy” case themselves – but NOW all CNBC etc will be talking about is this tweet https://t.co/yxmG1wW2xh
— John E Deaton (@JohnEDeaton1) May 13, 2021
In the past Ripple CEO, Brad Garlinghouse has repeatedly claimed that XRP is more energy-intensive than other cryptocurrencies. In a recent interview, Garlinghouse claimed that the token was 10,000 times more energy-efficient than Bitcoin.
While Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen suggested that Bitcoin should ditch its power-intensive proof-of-work consensus mechanism if it wants to remain the leading cryptocurrency.
While Stellar, Algorand, Cardano, IOTA, and Nano are all sustainable cryptocurrencies, Elon Musk’s favorite Dogecoin is also more energy-efficient than Bitcoin due to its Scrypt mining algorithm.