Tesla CEO and billionaire Elon Musk he announced that Tesla would no longer accept Bitcoin (BTC) as a payment method. This culminated in BTC’s price decreasing drastically and Elon, therefore, drawing the ire of many in the crypto community.
Matters were worsened when Elon threatened to sell off the rest of the BTC that Tesla holds and possibly removing Bitcoin completely from its balance sheet.
Ark breaks silence
Yassine Elmandjra, an analyst acting on behalf of Ark Investment Management, stated that Elon’s concerns regarding the energy consumption of BTC are quite ‘misinformed and misguided. The analyst claims that the process of mining may, in fact, be net positive as far as the environment is concerned.
What is interesting, though, is the fact that Elmandjra also mentioned Square and Ark’s collective white paper regarding green and sustainable BTC mining, something that Elon himself apparently gave his approval for. This added more fuel to the fire that the Tesla CEO’s recent comments about Bitcoin mining’s environmental concerns may actually be a bit hypocritical.
Elon may leave Bitcoin behind
As if the situation weren’t bad enough, Elon is now claiming that not only could his company’s BTC holdings be completely removed, but that he would instead much rather focus on supporting Dogecoin (DOGE) as his choice of cryptocurrency. Numerous investors and members of the crypto community could not help but feel insulted, as DOGE is considered a joke by many, including its own creators.
This may all culminate in Elon Musk eventually leaving the Bitcoin market altogether, which admittedly maybe for the best as the world’s flagship cryptocurrency had been struggling long before Elon’s recent comments and decisions. Bitcoin had been unable to reach its previous all-time high of over $60,000, and as of the time of this writing, it is trading at a price of $45,266, which is a 4.1% increase within the previous 24 hours. Its current market capitalization is $843,162,876,131.
Moreover, Elon has also stated that Bitcoin mining is actually highly centralized in nature due to only a couple of companies exhibiting control over it. He also provided the characteristics that he tends to search for when discussing the possibility of a global currency adopted by everyone, with bigger transaction volume and lower fees being the main factors.
Lastly, he also fired back at anyone who claimed that he might be misinformed through his mentioning of PayPal, with which he added that he believes he is quite knowledgeable of the financial sector as well.
