Bitcoin rose above the $40,000 mark after the quick-to-tweet CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, announced that his company would resume bitcoin transactions once it confirms miners are using reasonable amounts of clean energy.
Musk’s tweet is the latest in a series that have triggered big moves in the cryptocurrency prices. He was quick to defend himself and his company when the CEO of Sygnia, Magda Wierzycka, recently accused him of pumping and dumping his company’s holdings of the cryptocurrency.
Wierzycka claims that Musk’s tweets about bitcoin are “market manipulation” and even went as far as to suggest that he should have been put under investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for his comments.
Musk claims that his company sold $272 million worth of “digital assets," which they used to reduce operating losses by $101 million during the first quarter. Musk shared in his tweet defending himself that his company only sold roughly 10% of its bitcoins holdings.
Musk’s Twitter account does seem to significantly impact cryptocurrency prices. Monday morning, the coin rose 12%, trading at a three-week high, though still considerably off of its $65,000 all-time high.
Musk has also Tweeted about other cryptocurrencies like DOGE coin, which saw a surge and seemed to rise every time he tweeted, just before it fell, following Musk’s appearance on SNL.
In an SEC filing in February, Tesla revealed that it purchased $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin. It also announced that it would start to accept bitcoin as payment for its products.
This was put to a stop in mid-May when concerns surrounding how bitcoin is mined started to arise, as reported by CNBC. Mining the cryptocurrency requires banks of powerful computers which have been a contributor to climate change.
“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. 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,” Musk said to CNBC last month.