Did Elon Musk Succeed in Changing Investors Mind On Bitcoin (BTC)?

Elon Musk, the iconic billionaire and CEO of the electric automaker, Tesla Inc has continued to grow his influence in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. A new survey report has duly captured the extent of the popularity of his opinion. The survey, conducted by Investing.com was targeted at assessing the influence of the eccentric business leader over financial markets.

The Investing.com’s Research Survey and Discoveries

Per the survey, as much as 49% of the 1,100 respondents in the research said that Bitcoin being environmentally unfriendly is an issue for them as an investor. Following the highly publicized criticism of Bitcoin by Elon Musk, 30% of investors said they sold off their coins in the past month with 20 percent attributing their sale to Musk’s comments.

The energy concerns have fueled a shift in the focus on Bitcoin and other Proof-of-Work (PoW) networks, to more energy-efficient alternatives.

“Bitcoin has an energy problem, as its network consumes more power than entire countries, like the Netherlands, or Pakistan,” said Jesse Cohen, senior analyst at Investing.com. “Ripple and Cardano, for example, are two cryptocurrencies which have less environmental impact than BTC and are more efficient in terms of their mining and transaction environmental costs.”  

While the alarm Elon Musk raised and his influence has impacted a number of the investors surveyed, it is stirring the need to explore green energy mining. Essentially, the influence of Elon Musk which earlier made him be crowned as “king of the crypto community,” has now earned him “some new enemies lately,” according to Cohen.

Elon Musk And Doge Themed Coins

Elon Musk has always expressed his interest and love for digital currencies using his social media handles. Taking to his large followership on the social media platform, Twitter, Elon Musk backs  his favorite cryptocurrencies particularly dog-themed coins, Dogecoin (DOGE), and Shiba Inu (SHIB). Here is one of his latest tweets, a post that sent the price of SHIB and FLOKI up 25% and 13.3% respectively

Tweets like this are not uncommon with Elon Musk. However, much recently, the highly vocal personality has criticized Bitcoin mining in relation to the high energy requirements and the underlying environmental impact.