According to Elon Musk, Tesla will only accept Bitcoin as a means of payment again when the environmental balance of the digital currency improves significantly.
The announcement has been made, as usual, through his Twitter account. As a benchmark, Musk stated, “reasonable (~50%) clean energy usage by miners with positive future trend, Tesla will resume allowing Bitcoin transactions.” As a result, the Bitcoin price rose slightly.
Past few months Musk had made several announcements regarding Bitcoin which caused the price of the digital currency to fluctuate. The American tycoon, owner of Tesla and SpaceX, announced last February the investment of $1.5 billion in Bitcoin and confirmed that Tesla would accept this cryptocurrency for the purchase of its vehicles. Later Musk rectified and affirmed that the company was going to stop offering Bitcoin as a payment method due to the high environmental impact of mining this virtual currency.
Elon Musk has also responded to a Cointelegraph twitter post about the allegations by Magda Wierzycka, Sygna CEO. Wierzycka indicts Elon Musk of manipulating Bitcoin prices in order to sell a large part of his initial investment at highs, and asked the US Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate the tycoon for alleged price manipulation of Bitcoin.
On the contrary, Musk claims that Tesla sold ten percent of its Bitcoin holdings to prove that Bitcoin could be easily liquidated without moving the market.
