Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, is one of the most passionate advocates for cryptocurrency.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk is a strong advocate of cryptocurrency and he announced that the EV major would accept cryptocurrency payments for a short time. Kimbal Musk, Elon’s brother, claims that Elon was unaware of the environmental impact of Bitcoin.
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An estimated $1.5 billion in cryptocurrency was purchased by the electric car manufacturer around a year back. Kimbal Musk spoke out about Tesla’s decision not to invest in Bitcoin.
“We didn’t know the environmental impact. We were like this seems like an excellent way to diversify our assets and a good store for value. Kimbal Musk said that it didn’t take too long to get a million messages – I don’t think we were kidding – telling us about our environmental impact.
Kimbal also stated that Tesla wants to promote alternative energy usage, and that their Bitcoin purchase may have been against that goal. Cryptocurrency mining requires a lot of energy. The majority of global energy is still generated by fossil fuel burning. This means that generating energy can release a lot of pollutants into the atmosphere.
Kimal Musk, speaking about Tesla’s decision not to invest in Bitcoin, also stated that it didn’t regret the decision and hopes that the entire blockchain industry can find more environmentally friendly solutions.
Tesla’s $1.5 billion investment in Bitcoin led to a sharp increase in the cryptocurrency’s value, which was eventually reversed a few months later. Tesla’s Bitcoin investment reached $1.99 billion by the end of 2021.
First Published Date: 27 February 2022, 01.42 PM IST
