The Real Reason Tesla Is Ditching Bitcoin
Elon Musk is lying.
really feel about cryptocurrency?
I wouldn t blame you if you re confused. The Tesla founder s recent erratic behavior has sent the entire crypto market up and down faster than an exploding SpaceX rocket. And it doesn t look like he s done with his wild shenanigans.
First, the mere announcement that he was going to host Saturday Night Live sent his pet crypto Dogecoin soaring to record highs. Rabid investors rushed into Dogecoin in anticipation of Musk s appearance, understandably assuming that he d plug the coin to a brand new audience and send prices soaring “to the moon.”
Why does Elon Musk say Bitcoin is bad for the environment?
14 May 21,
……………If Bitcoin is virtual, why are there environmental concerns?
The issue is that all these computer farms working overtime to mine bitcoin use up a lot of real-world energy.The grunt work of adding to the block chain has computers run guessing games involving an astronomically large number of guesses each second.
To be more precise, the network is currently estimated as being able to handle 176,000,000,000,000,000,000 (that’s 176 quintillion) computations every single second.
All those numbers are energy intensive, so the power consumption of the Bitcoin network is huge.
Tesla s Musk halts use of bitcoin for car purchases
By Hyunjoo Jin and Kanishka Singh
Reuters
(Reuters) -Tesla Inc will no longer accept bitcoin for car purchases, Chief Executive Elon Musk said on Wednesday, citing long-brewing environmental concerns for a swift reversal in the company s position on the cryptocurrency.
Bitcoin fell more than 10% after Musk tweeted his decision to suspend its use, less than two months after Tesla began accepting the world s biggest digital currency for payment. Other cryptocurrencies, including ethereum, also fell before regaining some ground in Asia trade.
The use of bitcoin to buy Tesla s electric vehicles had highlighted a dichotomy between Musk s reputation as an environmentalist and the use of his popularity and stature as one of the world s richest people to back cryptocurrencies.
And Musk vowed to start using Bitcoin again “as soon as mining transitions to more sustainable energy.”
The industry is environmentally unsound because the process of mining for Bitcoin, or the complex mathematical calculations that are computed for every new Bitcoin, is highly energy-intensive.
The University of Cambridge’s Centre for Alternative Finance estimates that as of Wednesday the industry had reached 147.8 terawatt hours.
And that is a significant increase from around 121.9 terawatt hours, or as much energy as a country like Argentina uses each year, when Tesla bought $1.5bn worth of Bitcoin in February.
The Centre for Alternative Finance says that Bitcoin now represents an estimated 0.59 per cent of global electricity production, or enough to power all the kettles in Britain to boil water for 33 years.