By Ishika Dangayach, 5:00 PM ET
Tesla Inc's (TSLA) Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said at a conference on Wednesday that the company will most likely resume accepting bitcoin as payment.
“It looks like bitcoin is shifting a lot more toward renewables and a bunch of the heavy-duty coal plants that were being used...have been shut down, especially in China,” said Elon Musk on Wednesday at The B-Word conference, an event hosted by the Crypto Council for Innovation.
“I want to do a little 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 toward increasing that number. If so, Tesla will most likely resume accepting bitcoin,” he said.
Tesla began accepting bitcoin as a means of payment in February, at the same time the company acquired a historic $1.5 billion in bitcoin.
But Tesla said in May that it would no longer accept bitcoin for vehicle sales citing environmental concerns.
“Tesla has suspended vehicle purchases using Bitcoin. We are concerned about rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal, which has the worst emissions of any fuel,” Musk tweeted in May.
Subsequently, then, Beijing has cracked down on cryptocurrency, expelling the country's crypto miners, who have since fled to other countries. According to new statistics from Cambridge University, many miners headed to the United States, which is now the world's second-largest destination for bitcoin miners, CNBC reported.
“Long-term, renewable energy will be the cheapest energy, but it doesn’t just happen overnight,” Musk said. “But as long as there is a conscious and determined, real effort by the mining community to move toward renewables, then obviously Tesla can support that.”
Musk's statements demonstrate that he still has tremendous sway over cryptocurrency prices. The price of bitcoin plummeted below $30,000 on Monday, after reaching an all-time high of more than $63,000 in April. However, the price rebounded when the billionaire founder divulged further facts about his and his companies' interests at the virtual panel.
Moreover, SpaceX holds bitcoin apart from Tesla's bitcoin holdings. Musk also stated that he owns bitcoin and dogecoin. Following his remarks, the value of all three cryptocurrencies increased.