Bitcoin value went up 8% at $32,160.16 and Ethereum rose 11.6% to $1,993.36 following Electric-car maker Tesla Inc’ Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk comments at the B Word conference on Wednesday that the company will most likely restart accepting bitcoin as payments, according to data from the Coindesk website.
The tech entrepreneur and provocateur said that the company is yet to conducts due diligence on the amount of renewable energy used to mine the currency. He explained that he wanted to confirm that the percentage of renewable energy usage is at or above 50% and if so, Tesla would resume accepting bitcoin.
The company’s decision early this year to start accepting Bitcoin as payment faced severe backlash from some Tesla investors and environmentalists citing concerns over the environmental impact of Bitcoin mining which uses huge amounts of electricity generated with fossil fuels.
Yet, the new trend sees the digital currency miners making attempts to use renewable energy to mitigate the impact on the environment with Musk pointing that Tesla’s mission is accelerating the advent of sustainable energy so the due diligence on the energy usage of bitcoin was considered more than necessary.
Apart from bitcoin that Tesla and SpaceX owned, Musk added that he personally owned bitcoin, ethereum and dogecoin, refuting the claims that he had helped to artificially increase the price of cryptocurrencies before selling them.
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