Tesla is gearing up to start bringing in Bitcoin as a mode of payment again. This is most likely the path that the electric-car maker is taking, but not before the company does some due diligence on the amount of renewable energy used to mine the crypto asset. This was as per a statement issued by Tesla CEO, Elon Musk at an event on Wednesday. This comes just around two months after the tech titan said the company would not be accepting Bitcoin for its car purchases. Musk made the announcement at the Bitcoin conference called, ‘The B Word’. He said, “I wanted a little bit more due diligence to confirm that the percentage of renewable energy usage is most likely at or above 50 per cent, and that there is a trend towards increasing that number, and if so, Tesla would resume accepting bitcoin.”
After the conference, Bitcoin was up by 8 per cent at $32,160.16 and Ether was up by 11 per cent at $1,993.36, according to Reuters. The shares owned by Tesla were apparently down by 0.8 per cent at $655.30 in the extended trading said the report. As it stands on Thursday, the price of Bitcoin on coin market cap is $31,938.79 per cent at the time of writing this article. It was up by 6.81 per cent over the last 24 hours. Ethereum was up by 9.46 per cent over the past day and stood at $1,976.00.
Musk added at the conference, “Most likely the answer is that Tesla would resume accepting Bitcoin.” The very fact that Bitcoin takes so much electricity to mine, is inverse to the company mission of Tesla which aims to bring about electric vehicles and take the burden off the environment. More and more crypto miners and investors have expressed concerns about the ‘traditional’ way of mining bitcoin and are taking steps to help mitigate the environmental impact.
Musk said that Tesla would most likely take on Bitcoin as a payment method once it shifts towards becoming less environmentally taxing. “It looks like Bitcoin is shifting more toward renewables,” adding that hydroelectric power, as well as geothermal and even nuclear energy, could be good sources for mining Bitcoin.
Elon Musk had attended ‘The B Word’ conference alongside Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey and Cathie Wood, head of Ark Investment Management. During the event, Wood noted that corporations should start considering Bitcoin as an addition to their balance sheets. She noted that it should function partly as a hedge against deflation. She added that the Financial Accounting Standards Board should also reconsider the classification standards it has for Bitcoin because when the price declines, institutions have to write off their holdings.
Musk has been a long-time investor and backer of the cryptocurrency, Bitcoin. This attempt to bring it back into the fray with Tesla comes just a few months after the Tesla CEO announced that Tesla would not be accepting Bitcoin. On May 13, 2021, the tech mogul Tweeted from his official Twitter account, issuing a statement.
The tweet read: “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. Cryptocurrency is a good idea on many levels and we believe it has a promising future, but this cannot come at great cost to the environment.”
He then went on to add in the tweet, “Tesla will not be selling any Bitcoin and we intend to use it for transactions as soon as mining transitions to more sustainable energy. We are also looking at other cryptocurrencies that use <1% of Bitcoin’s energy/transactions.”
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