Thanks to Elon Musk, Bitcoin once again neared $40K.
This was right after the CEO of Tesla Inc. tweeted that the company would resume transactions with Bitcoin when mining is done with more clean energy. Bitcoin was up by more than 12% over the past day which drove its price all the way to $39,293, at the time of writing, the highest level since the 3rd of June. The latest comment comes after the exec announced halting BTC payments at Tesla citing environmental concerns just a few months after entering the space.
His tweet regarding the same, read,
“When there’s confirmation of reasonable (~50%) clean energy usage by miners with positive future trend, Tesla will resume allowing Bitcoin transactions.”
Musk’s latest argument was in response to the reports of Magda Wierzycka, the CEO of financial services company Sygnia questioning the nature of his tweets and their relation to the price action of Bitcoin and Dogecoin. In a conversation with Bruce Whitfield at the Money Show last week, Wierzycka, who happens to be one of the richest women in South Africa, took a jibe at the ‘Technoking’ when she said,
“The volatility we have seen is an unexpected function of what I would call market manipulation by Elon Musk. If that happens to a listed company, he would be investigated and severely sanctioned by SEC.”
While brushing off Wierzycka’s criticism as “inaccurate,” Musk reiterated his previous defense and went on to add that Tesla had sold nearly 10% of holdings to demonstrate that the cryptocurrency could be liquidated easily without moving the market.
Bitcoin Mining Conundrum
The debate over the environmental effect of mining BTC has intensified over the past year. In a bid to bring in sustainable methods for the same, the Square, the financial services and mobile payments company founded by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, had earlier announced collaborating with blockchain technology provider Blockstream Mining to build an open-source, solar-powered bitcoin mining facility. According to reports, it also planned to infuse $5 million in the renewable mining facility, with Blockstream.