Tesla will return to accepting payments in BTC
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Tesla will return to accepting payments in BTC. This was stated by CEO Elon Musk on Twitter responding to a post.
This is inaccurate. Tesla only sold ~10% of holdings to confirm BTC could be liquidated easily without moving market.
When there’s confirmation of reasonable (~50%) clean energy usage by miners with positive future trend, Tesla will resume allowing BTC transactions.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 13, 2021
The accusation against Elon Musk is that he has manipulated the market with his constant tweets about BTC. In response to yet another article on the subject, Musk said that Tesla had only sold 10% of its BTC in order to check the markets’ reaction and the risk of turbulence. He added:
“When there’s confirmation of reasonable (~50%) clean energy usage by miners with positive future trend, Tesla will resume allowing BTC transactions”.
It was in pursuit of this goal that the BTC Mining Council, a “consortium” uniting the largest BTC mining companies in North America, came into being in recent weeks. It was christened by Michael Saylor, CEO of Microstrategy, and Tesla’s own CEO, who met with the miners. But apparently, Elon Musk will not play any role in this organization.
An official note reads:
“Elon Musk has no role at the BMC. The extent of his involvement was joining an educational call with a group of North American companies to discuss BTC mining.”
The decision to exclude Elon Musk probably also responds to the need to keep the market protected from the Tesla CEO’s constant tweets, which, it has been seen, can cause sensational pump and dumps.
Tesla will resume accepting BTC: the reaction of the market
The fact that Tesla will return to accepting BTC seems to have given the market a shake-up, this time a positive one. Today, BTC is gaining about 12% and is back within touching distance of $40,000. This price increase comes after a difficult few weeks, with BTC losing about 50% of its value since its $65,000 peak in April. Two factors had mainly reversed BTC’s rising course:
- China’s new ban on cryptocurrencies,
- the news that Tesla would no longer accept payments in BTC.
Elon Musk’s choice at the time helped to reopen the debate on BTC’s energy consumption and the need to make the blockchain work with clean energy. In fact, this has been a long-standing trend, as demonstrated by the project by Square and Ark Invest. In contrast, the community did not particularly appreciate the emergence of the BTC Mining Council as an attempt to control BTC. The fact that Musk is not a member, however, could make the association less centralized or less subject to the influence of Tesla’s CEO.
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