Speaking remotely at the B Word Conference today, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the electric car company is ‘likely’ to resume accepting payment for its vehicles in the cryptocurrency, after pausing the option in May.
“I wanted a little bit more due diligence to confirm that the percentage of renewable energy usage is most likely at or above 50%, and that there is a trend towards increasing that number, and if so Tesla would resume accepting Bitcoin,” said Musk, echoing a statement he’d tweeted in June.
The BBC noted this caused the price of Bitcoin to surge past the $30,000 mark. At the time of writing, the cryptocurrency is valued at $31,899.
For those keeping score at home, here’s a brief timeline of events:
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Tesla had started accepting payments in Bitcoin for its cars in March, a move that caused cryptocurrency’s price to surge that day from just over US$39,000 to US$46,000 that day. The EV maker then paused Bitcoin payments in May, with Musk citing concerns about the “rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels” used in mining the cryptocurrency.
Tesla & Bitcoin pic.twitter.com/YSswJmVZhP
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 12, 2021
On June 13, Musk said the company would bring back the option to buy Tesla cars with Bitcoin when clean energy usage by cryptocurrency miners approached 50%.
The oft-outspoken CEO didn’t specify any sort of time frame for this. However, he did reveal that he owned Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Dogecoin, and that he is indeed a cryptocurrency optimist. “I might pump, but I don’t dump… I definitely do not believe in getting the price high and selling… I would like to see Bitcoin succeed,” he said.
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