What just happened? Bitcoin's value fell by virtually 17% a few hours ago, and it'south all Elon Musk's error. The 2nd-richest person in the world has suspended Tesla customers' ability to utilise the cryptocurrency when purchasing one of the company's EVs due to concerns over its touch on the climate.

Tesla's embracing of Bitcoin has helped pump the price even higher this year. The crypto reached an all-time high of $44,000 back in Feb when the automaker revealed it had invested $i.5 billion in Bitcoin and would presently accept information technology every bit payment. In March, Tesla started allowing United states customers to pay for a Tesla using BTC.

But Musk has just washed a U-turn, tweeting that Tesla is suspending vehicle purchases using Bitcoin, citing the environmental harm caused past mining. "We are concerned near chop-chop increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal, which has the worst emissions of whatever fuel," Musk wrote. "Cryptocurrency is a good idea on many levels and we believe information technology has a promising future, but this cannot come up at smashing cost to the environment."

Musk added that Tesla would not be selling any of its Bitcoin and intends to utilise it equally presently as mining transitions to more sustainable free energy—whenever that might be.

Interestingly, Musk added that "Nosotros are also looking at other cryptocurrencies that utilize <1% of bitcoin's energy/transaction." New crypto Chia positions itself as a greener culling to other cryptos as it is "farmed" using drive space rather than mined with calculating power, but nosotros recently heard information technology tin can ruin a 512GB SDD in only over a calendar month and is causing HDD/SDD shortages—not very environmentally friendly. Still, information technology's better than Bitcoin, which uses more free energy each twelvemonth than the whole of Sweden and could have a carbon footprint the same size as that of London.

Bitcoin's price over the last 24 hours. Spot the moment when Musk tweeted

Musk's Tweet saw Bitcoin'southward price tumble effectually 17% to $46,000, its lowest point since March 1. The rush to sell acquired outages at some exchanges. Information technology has rebounded slightly to ~$51,000, but that'south nonetheless effectually $5,000 lower than before the CEO's postal service.