A couple of months ago, Tesla announced that they will be accepting bitcoin as payment for their electric cars. It sounded like a good idea, especially with Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk seemingly making a push for cryptocurrency to be more mainstream with his stream of tweets over Dogecoin.
That being said, it turns out that the company has quickly reversed their decision. In a statement published onto Twitter, Musk has confirmed that Tesla will no longer be accepting bitcoin as payment for their cars. According to Musk, the main reason behind this decision is because of carbon emissions.
Tesla & Bitcoin pic.twitter.com/YSswJmVZhP
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 12, 2021
As you know, mining for cryptocurrency takes up a lot of energy and can burn through hardware pretty fast. This means that people mining for bitcoin are producing a lot of emissions which is kind of going against what Tesla’s electric cars stand for, a greener alternative to gas-powered vehicles.
Musk still believes that cryptocurrency is a good idea but until it becomes more sustainable, Tesla will not be accepting it. We doubt that this will have too big of an impact for most of Tesla’s customers, but if you do hold some bitcoin, the alternative would be to sell it and convert it to regular money and use that to buy a Tesla instead.
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