Crypto Market Tumbles As Elon Musk’s Tesla Suspends Bitcoin Payment Option

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The cryptocurrency market plunged Thursday morning, after Elon Musk, chief executive officer of Tesla, announced that the electric carmaker has suspended bitcoin payment option.

In March, Tesla had introduced bitcoin payment option for the company’s products, a month after it announced that it had invested $1.5 billion in bitcoin.

But in a tweet yesterday, Musk said the company is looking at other cryptocurrencies that are more environmentally sustainable.

Checks by journalists show that the prices of Bitcoin dropped more than 11 percent to $50,883.95. Etherum price declined by 8.6 percent to 43,915 while Doge dropped by 17.06percent to $0.422653, according to CoinDesk data.

“Tesla has suspended vehicle purchases using Bitcoin. We are concerned about rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal, which has the worst emissions of any fuel,” Musk tweeted.

“Cryptocurrency is a good idea on many levels and we believe it has a promising future, but this cannot come at great cost to the environment.

“Tesla will not be selling any Bitcoin and we intend to use it for transactions as soon as mining transitions to more sustainable energy. We are also looking at other cryptocurrencies that use <1% of Bitcoin’s energy/transaction.”