The accusation levelled on Musk in a Cointelegraph tweet about Sygnia CEO Magda Wierzycka over his alleged Bitcoin price manipulation has prompted his response to Tesla’s acceptance of Bitcoin.
The CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk says his electric-vehicle company will start accepting Bitcoin (BTC) as a means of payment provided there is an assurance that miners are utilizing clean energy, and also offering a glimmer of hope that the Fear Uncertainty Doubt (FUD) surrounding digital assets could soon decrease.
Elon responded to a Cointelegraph tweet about a recent accusation from Sygnia CEO Magda Wierzycka, who called on the United States Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate the billionaire for allegedly influencing the price of Bitcoin.
In a Sunday response, Musk said, “This is inaccurate because Tesla only sold ~10% of holdings to confirm BTC could be liquidated easily without moving market. When there’s confirmation of reasonable (~50%) clean energy usage by miners with the positive future trend, Tesla will resume allowing Bitcoin transactions.”
However, according to Wierzycka, Musk knowingly pumped the price of Bitcoin only to sell a “big part of his exposure at the peak.”
In a report by Cointelegraph, Musk made known earlier in April that Tesla had sold a portion of its Bitcoin holdings to prove its liquidity as a substitute to cash. Just one month earlier, the CEO confirmed that Tesla added $1.5 billion worth of BTC to its balance sheet and would start accepting the virtual asset as payment for its vehicles.
Not too long after, Tesla’s embrace of Bitcoin-as-a-payment was only short-lived after Musk showed concerns over the type of energy used in mining cryptocurrencies. On May 12, Musk tweeted that his company would no longer accept Bitcoin payments due to the network’s “increasingly rapid use of fossil fuels and its impacts on health and the environment”
His tweet coincided with a slew of negative headlines about Bitcoin’s energy usage, China’s intent to ban Bitcoin mining and an overextended crypto rally that was showing signs of weakness. The news cycle triggered one of Bitcoin’s most painful episodes, resulting in a 54% drop between mid-April and mid-May.
As Cointelegraph reported, Musk was recently invited to a meeting of Bitcoin miners by MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor. The Bitcoin Mining Council, a voluntary, self-regulating industry body, emerged from the meeting with a mandate to use more renewable energy and promote more transparency in the mining process.
As a result of all the drawbacks regarding Bitcoin mining, it’s projected that a strong majority of cryptocurrency miners already use alternative energy source for mining.
