Elon Musk is once again trending with his latest comments in B word conference related to the cryptocurrency. Tesla founder, Elon Musk clarified that Tesla will most likely restart accepting bitcoin as payment once it conducts due diligence on the amount of renewable energy used to mine the digital currency.
Musk said, "Most likely the answer is that Tesla would resume accepting bitcoin."
"I wanted a little bit more due diligence to confirm that the percentage of renewable energy usage is most likely at or above 50%, and that there is a trend towards increasing that number, and if so Tesla would resume accepting bitcoin" Musk said.
He further stated, "If the price of bitcoin goes down I lose money. I might pump but I don't dump," Musk said. "I definitely do not believe in getting the price high and selling or anything like that. I would like to see bitcoin succeed."
"Tesla's mission is accelerating the advent of sustainable energy. We can't be the company that does that and also not do appropriate diligence on the energy usage of bitcoin," Musk said.
Musk added that he personally owned bitcoin, ethereum and dogecoin, apart from bitcoin that Tesla and SpaceX owned.
After the conference, Bitcoin rose by 8 percent at $32,160.16 (roughly Rs. 23.9 lakhs), while ether surged 11.6 percent to $1,993.36 (roughly Rs. 1.4 lakhs). Tesla's shares were down 0.8 percent at $655.30 in extended trading. Bitcoin price in India stood at Rs. 23.7 lakhs as of 10 am IST on July 22.
The use of bitcoin to buy Tesla’s electric vehicles had highlighted a dichotomy between Musk’s reputation as an environmentalist and the use of his popularity and stature as one of the world’s richest people to back cryptocurrencies.
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Some Tesla investors, along with environmentalists, have been increasingly critical about the way bitcoin is “mined” using vast amounts of electricity generated with fossil fuels.
More digital currency miners, however, are making attempts to use renewable energy to mitigate the impact on the environment.