The price of Bitcoin rose again after Elon Musk announced that his company, Tesla, would possibly accept the digital currency as a form of payment again, providing virtual mining would take a more non-polluting path.
Musk announced that if 50% or more Bitcoin mining would be done with renewable energy, this would be enough for him to restart the option for people to purchase Teslacars with Bitcoin again. The electric car manufacturer stopped accepting BTC as a form of payment last May, after only accepting the option for Bitcoin payments for his electric cars for little over 3 months.
Musk’s reasons for his May announcement were his concerns about the excessive amount of fossil fuels needed to generate Bitcoin, and the negative impact this has on the environment. 65% of all bitcoin mining is currently done in China. The country is generating most of its electricity the old fashioned way, by burning coal.
After Elon’s May tweet the value of the cryptocurrency plummeted from its all-time highs (around $ 63,000) to a low of around $33.000 on June 8. After Musk’s latest tweet, the value has now gone up and reached the barrier of $40.000 again.
Musk’s influence on the price of cryptocurrencies can be called remarkable. Bitcoin soared after the tycoon’s message that it could be overcoming a barrier. But he has also been widely criticized for ‘manipulation’ of the worlds most popular digital coin.
Rumours that both Microstrategy CEO Michael Saylor and Tesla CEO Elon Musk formed something called the North American Bitcoin Mining Council (BMC), whose sole purpose is to ensure adherence to renewable energy usage for Bitcoin mining and promote energy usage transparency in the flagship cryptocurrency, did not seem to be entirely true. Apparently the group was spearheaded by Saylor, and Musk was not included.
It became evident that Musk’s involvement was no more than joining an educational call with a group of North American companies to discuss Bitcoin mining.
Many bitcoiners are watching the (BMC) with suspicion. They are seeing the group as some sort of cartel or attempt at “centralized” manipulation.
