There was bloodbath in the markets a few hours prior as Bitcoin had recently tanked from approximately $54000 down to $46000, and with it bringing along other altcoins and the crypto market as a whole. This the 2nd time in a week that Elon Musk has negatively manipulated a cryptocurrency, the previous being Dogecoin on SNL when he called it a 'hustle'.
According to Elon Musk, “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 a great cost to the environment.
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/transaction.”
It is unthinkable that Elon did not know the amount of energy that Bitcoin mining required due to its proof-of-work mechanism, and is perhaps just using it as an excuse to manipulate the price of Bitcoin for him to sell before the dump, and then buy it cheap again, making hundreds of millions in profits.
To dispute his point, electric cars are just as green for the envrironment as Bitcoin is. As it is power companies that provide the electricity in the grid to be distributed to consumers (be it households or electric cars or Bitcoin mining farms), the fact is that a vast amount of energy today is still powered by fossil fuels. This pushes the blame more towards power companies for using these energy generation methods that produce a lot of carbon emissions. As such, it is foolish to blame Bitcoin for being environmentally unfriendly
Furthermore, lithium mining for lithium-ion batteries in electric cars also have various adverse effects on the environment.
This rugpull in the crypto markets also signal that we are still in the early days of cryptocurrency, as a simple statement by a CEO of a S&P500 company holds so much weight that it can tank the market by 15-20%. In a sense, the market seems to be still controlled by a centralised power, and we have much to do to achieve our goals of a decentralised ecosystem.