As much as $365 billion was wiped off the cryptocurrency market late Wednesday after Tesla Motors announced that it would suspend car purchases using bitcoin.
According to CEO Elon Musk, Tesla is worried about the environmental impact of bitcoin mining. Although he and Tesla believe in the fundamentals of cryptocurrency, “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.”
Tesla confirmed that it is not selling any of its bitcoin holdings, but it did note that it will be “looking at other cryptocurrencies that use <1% of bitcoin’s energy/transaction.”
At the time of this writing, bitcoin prices are down $3,423.20, or 6.31 percent, to $50,832.84. It fell below $50,000 before paring some of its losses.
Other cryptocurrencies slumped on the news, too, including Ethereum (-1.94 percent) and XRP (-2.33 percent). Dogecoin also plummeted 11.5 percent to below 44 cents.
Here is the full statement:
Tesla & Bitcoin pic.twitter.com/YSswJmVZhP
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 12, 2021
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