In Musk's position, Tesla cannot produce electric cars while supporting cryptocurrencies that affect the environment.
On May 13, Tesla’s boss, Elon Musk, announced that, considering the impact of Bitcoin on the environment, Tesla would no longer accept Bitcoin payments . The news came out and shocked the entire currency circle.
"We are worried that Bitcoin mining and trading will lead to a rapid increase in the consumption of fossil fuels, especially coal. Coal has the worst impact of all fossil fuel emissions," Musk added, "Bitcoin's recent energy consumption is very crazy. "
Having said this, Musk reiterated on Twitter that he is still very confident in cryptocurrencies and said that Tesla is looking for cryptocurrencies that consume less than 1% of Bitcoin per transaction.
In the past seven years, Musk's stance on Bitcoin has changed from curiosity to full acceptance. Bitcoin fans have long been accustomed to this star entrepreneur becoming one of the most influential supporters of Bitcoin. And the sudden change in attitude made Bitcoin fans shocked, and many people "fluttered back on him".
1. The history of Musk and Bitcoin
The history of Musk and Bitcoin can be traced back to March 2014 , when a Twitter user asked him his position on cryptocurrency, and he gave an elusive answer: "Well, now that Satoshi Nakamoto has been discovered , I think the matter will be closed."
Also this year, at a summit, Musk was asked by the host about his views on Bitcoin. He said that Bitcoin may be a good thing. He added, "It is mainly used for illegal transactions."
After a while, the Tesla CEO began to pay attention to Bitcoin seriously. In 2017, he denied the rumors that he was the founder of Bitcoin on Twitter. He also revealed: "A friend gave me some Bitcoins, but I don't know where these coins are."
The real change of position was in 2019. When recording a podcast with the technology investment company ARK, Musk said that Bitcoin is excellent. "Paper currency is disappearing. Cryptocurrency is a better way to transfer value than paper. This is definitely."
In May 2020, Musk responded to "Harry Potter" author JK Rowling on Twitter, saying that the recent actions of the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank made Bitcoin "look more reliable."
More than a month later, many celebrities, including Musk, were hacked into their Twitter accounts. They posted a link stating that Bitcoin was transferred to a certain address, and the transferor would be returned more Bitcoin. This scam was only two years away. It made about 2 million U.S. dollars in a month.
It turns out that this is just a small episode, and Musk began to intensively express his support for Bitcoin , the cryptocurrency ace product.
In December 2020, Musk called Bitcoin as his "safe vocabulary" on Twitter. After a while, he clarified that he was just joking.
Also on this day, Musk asked Mike Seller, CEO of Microstrategy, a listed company that had previously bought a large amount of Bitcoin, about the possibility of converting the "large transactions" on Tesla's balance sheet into Bitcoin. . Saylor replied, "I am willing to share my script with you offline."
A month later, Musk updated his Twitter information to "#bitcoin" , which caused many big Vs to follow suit and imitate. A later study showed that Musk's behavior pushed the price of Bitcoin up by 18.99%.
In February 2021, Musk appeared on the audio social media platform. This time he confirmed very clearly that he was a supporter of Bitcoin: "Bitcoin is a good thing... I'm late for this party."
Later that month, Musk fulfilled his original promise, and Tesla announced that it had invested $1.5 billion in Bitcoin. Mike Sayler is very happy. He said that there will be a large number of companies following in Tesla's footsteps. In fact, there are indeed some companies that include Bitcoin as investment targets, including magazine publisher "TIME", Norwegian multinational company Aker ASA and Mercado Libre, a Latin American e-commerce platform.
However, at the end of the first quarter of 2021, Tesla's financial report showed that the company sold $272 million worth of Bitcoin. In this regard, Musk clarified on Twitter that Tesla did this "essentially to prove that Bitcoin is very liquid and can replace cash on the balance sheet."
At this time, the crypto world has regarded Tesla CEO as one of Bitcoin's biggest influencers. This situation didn't last long. Obviously, Musk's position on Bitcoin is more unstable than Bitcoin's price.
Second, Musk's attitude has changed greatly
The day before yesterday, after Musk expressed his concern about Bitcoin's energy consumption, many Bitcoin supporters who had praised him were very disappointed, including Thaler, who had interacted with him before. He believed that 75% of Bitcoin's electricity came from energy. renewable energy.
"Bitcoin does consume a lot of energy, but so does the U.S. dollar, and countless other industries, including Musk's own company."
In fact, what Musk said is right. Bitcoin's carbon emissions are indeed very high. According to data from the University of Cambridge, Bitcoin consumes nearly 150 MWh of electricity every year, which means that if Bitcoin is a country, it will easily rank among the top 30 countries in the world for electricity consumption.
There are also different opinions on whether to use renewable resources. According to data from the University of Cambridge, only 39% of Bitcoin mining energy is renewable, while crypto asset management company Coinshares believes this figure is as high as 77%.
Last month, after a domestic coal mine was closed due to permeable water, Bitcoin's computing power dropped to its lowest level since November 2020, indicating that the Bitcoin network relies heavily on fossil fuels such as coal.
Third, after Musk
Nowadays, people are speculating about what caused Musk to make a big turn. Obviously, just three months ago, Tesla also invested 1.5 billion US dollars in Bitcoin.
As Ledgermatic CEO Luke Sally said, “ Tesla’s initial due diligence was not difficult to find the energy use of Bitcoin, but this did not prevent them from buying billions of Bitcoin assets at the end of last year. "
In Musk's position, Tesla cannot produce electric cars while supporting cryptocurrencies that affect the environment. However, according to his statement, Tesla did not intend to sell the bitcoins in his hands.
In any case, as Musk's attitude changes, his influence in the Bitcoin faith group has plummeted, and the group will also look for the next first-line celebrity influencer.
This may not take long. After all, just a few days ago, Facebook founder Zuckerberg announced to the world that his pet goat was named "Bitcoin."
Musk and his plans tho...