It has been suggested that due to the energy required to run a bitcoin mining system that in some cases, it’s actually better to just buy bitcoin instead of mining for it yourself. Also, a downside to mining for bitcoin is that the energy consumed might not always be clean, which is why months after announcing they would accept bitcoin, Tesla walked back on their plan.
However, this doesn’t mean that the company is closed off to the idea of accepting cryptocurrency. In a tweet by Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk, it seems that the company is open to accepting bitcoin again once miners start to adopt cleaner energy when it comes to their mining operations.
This is inaccurate. 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 positive future trend, Tesla will resume allowing Bitcoin transactions.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 13, 2021
According to Musk when he previously announced that Tesla would no longer accept bitcoin, he said that he believed that cryptocurrency has a promising future, but that future cannot come at the cost of the environment. That being said, some have challenged Musk’s tweets about clean energy, bringing up articles that suggest that over 70% of bitcoin mining is already powered by renewable energy.
In any case, just don’t hold your breath if you were hoping to see Tesla start accepting bitcoin in the near future. It might return, who’s to say, but just don’t bank on it anytime soon.
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