“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”, the electric car company CEO tweeted.
“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.”
Bitcoin fell from a daily high of £39,000 to around £37,190 in the immediate aftermath of the Tesla CEO’s tweet. The Independent has reached out to Tesla for comment.
The unexpected news comes after Mr Musk has been a prominent advocate for the cryptocurrency throughout the year. In March, the chief executive tweeted in the middle of the night US time: “You can now buy a Tesla with Bitcoin.”
He went on to clarify that Tesla would keep the money received as cryptocurrency, rather than converting it into a fiat currency such as dollars.
“Tesla is using only internal & open source software & operates Bitcoin nodes directly. Bitcoin paid to Tesla will be retained as Bitcoin, not converted to fiat currency,” he said in another tweet. “Pay by Bitcoin capability available outside US later this year.”
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