Tesla to stop accepting Bitcoin for car payments
Tesla's stock finished Wednesday down 4.4%.Tesla said in February that it had invested around $1.5 billion in Bitcoin and it planned to begin accepting the digital currency as payment “soon
Electric car maker Tesla Inc [TSLA] will stop accepting Bitcoin as a payment, CEO Elon Musk tweeted on Wednesday, citing environmental concerns.“We are concerned about rapid increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal, which has the worst emissions of any fuel,” Musk said on Twitter.
He added that cryptocurrency is a “good idea on many levels” but its promise cannot come at a “great cost to the environment.Tesla, he added, won't be selling any of the Bitcoin it owns.The price of bitcoin fell about 5% to $51,847 after Musk's comments on Twitter.
Tesla's stock finished Wednesday down 4.4%.Tesla said in February that it had invested around $1.5 billion in Bitcoin and it planned to begin accepting the digital currency as payment “soon. The fair market value of Tesla's Bitcoin holdings as of March 31 was $2.48 billion, according to securities filings.Bitcoin relies on computers, which rely on electricity, to exist.
The number of computers and the energy needed to power them is rising — the growing value of bitcoin is directly tied to the amount of energy it uses.Bitcoin miners unlock bitcoins by solving complex, unique puzzles.
