Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that the electric carmaker will no longer accept Bitcoin as a form of payment. Musk cited the environmental costs of mining the digital cryptocurrency in a statement posted on Twitter.
"We are concerned about rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal, which has the worst emissions of any fuel," Musk wrote.
He said that while he supports the idea of cryptocurrency, it "cannot come at a great cost to the environment."
In a follow-up tweet, Musk called the amount of energy used to produce Bitcoin "insane," sharing a graph showing the annual energy consumption of the cryptocurrency.
The decision comes just three months after Tesla announced it had purchased $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin and was planning to accept the cryptocurrency from consumers. The car company will keep its stash of Bitcoins for now and will use it for transactions "as soon as mining transitions to more sustainable energy."
Musk's announcement sent the price of Bitcoin down by about 10%, while the entire cryptocurrency market lost $365.85 billion in value, according to CNBC. While Bitcoin fell below $50,000 for the first time since April 24, the cryptocurrency is still up over 400% in the past 12 months.
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