Since the beginning of the year, the head of Tesla, Elon Musk, has repeatedly spoken positively about various cryptocurrencies, and the company even began to accept bitcoin when paying for the purchase of electric vehicles. Tesla also bought the $ 1,5 billion worth of this cryptocurrency as a highly liquid asset, but Musk refused to accept Bitcoin for payment a few hours ago.

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The seemingly unexpected decision is driven by the growing share of fossil fuel electricity used in cryptocurrency mining. Elon Musk said this from Twitter pages late in the evening, instantly bringing down the bitcoin rate by 17%, from $ 54 to $ 819, and some cryptocurrency exchanges, due to the influx of those who want to get rid of bitcoin, even faced technical problems. Ethereum also managed to lose up to 45%, falling to $ 700, but with the beginning of morning trading in Asia, both cryptocurrencies partially regained their lost positions. Bitcoin is currently worth around $ 14, while Ethereum is around $ 3550.

Musk found it necessary to add that Tesla is only temporarily suspending accepting bitcoin as a means of payment. The company will not sell its stock of bitcoins. Tesla plans to return to accepting payments in this cryptocurrency after electricity from renewable sources is used more actively for its production. 

«Tesla suspends Bitcoin car sales. We are concerned about the rapidly growing use of fossil fuels to power Bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal, which has the worst emissions of any fuel.Musk said in a tweet.

At the same time, Tesla is ready to consider operations with cryptocurrency, the production of which is not so energy-intensive. The specific electricity consumption per transaction should be less than one percent compared to Bitcoin mining, as Elon Musk explained. He named “Cryptocurrencies are a good idea in many ways, with a promising future.”, but explained that this should not cause significant damage to the environment. According to analysts, bitcoin mining now requires 66 times more energy than in 2015.