Bitcoin hit a two-week high just short of $40,000 on Monday, after another weekend response to the tweets from Elon Musk. He rebuffed criticism over his market influence and said that Tesla sold Bitcoin but may resume transactions using it.
Bitcoin has spun around Musk’s views for months since Tesla announced a $1.5 billion (roughly Rs. 10,980 crores) Bitcoin purchase in February. The company postulated that it would take the cryptocurrency in payment. However, he later annulled to accept Bitcoin due to apprehension over bitcoin mining which requires high energy usage and contributes to climate change. Bitcoin price in India stood at 28.7 lakhs at noon IST on June 14.
“When there’s substantiate of reasonable (~50 percent) clean energy usage by miners with the future upward progress. Tesla will resume permitting Bitcoin transactions,” Musk said on Twitter on Sunday.
Bitcoin rallied more than 9 percent after the tweet, exploding above its 20-day rolling average, and it ascended a tiny bit further in Asia to hit $39,838.92 (roughly Rs. 29.1 lakhs).
“The market had undergone another round of rectification over the weekend. However, Elon Musk’s tweet of accepting BTC again for Tesla purchases changed sentiment,” said Bobby Ong, co-founder of crypto analytics website Coin Gecko.
He remarked that the market was also boosted by software companies and significant Bitcoin-backer MicroStrategy, raising half a billion dollars to buy Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is up about 33 percent this year but has collapsed from a record peak above $60,000 (roughly Rs. 44 lakhs) amid a regulatory crackdown in China and Musk’s wavering enthusiasm for it. Tesla stock is down about 30 percent since the Bitcoin investment.
In a radio interview the previous week, Magda Wierzycka, head of cybersecurity firm Syngia, accused Musk of price manipulation and selling a big part of his manifestation.
“This is inaccurate,” Musk said. “Tesla only sold ~10 percent of its BTC holdings, which could be liquidated easily without causing movement in the market.”
Musk had tweeted earlier in May that Tesla “will not be selling any Bitcoin” and “has not sold any Bitcoin.” However, stakeholders are avidly awaiting Tesla’s following financial statement – due next month – for any disclosure of changes to its disposition.
Musk resolved the issue with the vast computing power required to process Bitcoin transactions and posted messages appearing to lament a breakup with Bitcoin in early June.