Elon Musk Doubles Down on Bitcoin Energy Consumption FUD, Says Bitcoin Energy Consumption is Insane

Elon Musk dropped a bombshell late yesterday after he announced that Tesla would no longer accept Bitcoin payment owing to its network’s high consumption rates, while at the same time also informed that Tesla won’t sell any Bitcoin they had bought earlier in February. The announcement took everyone by surprise given Musk had recently extended his support for Bitcoin’s promotion of clean and renewable energy usage. The billionaire received a lot of flak from the Bitcoin community for flip-flopping on his statements. Many pointed towards the company’s recent attempt to enter the renewable fuel credit market.

Musk has now added to his early announcement with an energy consumption chart of Bitcoin’s network, calling the recent energy consumption trend insane.

While there is no denying the fact that Bitcoin’s PoW mining consensus consumes comparatively much higher energy than most of the other crypto assets but at the same time, it is also important to note that a majority of Bitcoin mining energy comes from clean renewable energy sources such as hydro powerplants and windmills. China which is the hot spot for Bitcoin mining has the most concentration of miners in areas where surplus clean energy is available in plenty, something Musk is aware of but doesn’t seem to highlight just three weeks after acknowledging it.

The Theories Behind Elon Musk’s Recent Bitcoin Energy Consumption Fud

Tesla has been receiving governmental subsidiaries for quite some time now and it played a key role in keeping the company afloat even at the brink of bankruptcy, thus the most formidable belief is that Tesla doesn’t want to face the government’s wrath but also make Bitcoin profit, thus they have decided to discontinue accepting Bitcoin as payment yet continue to hold the same supposed environmentally bad bitcoin which they bought a few months earlier.

Another theory suggests that no one is using their Bitcoin to buy Tesla cars which is understandable given the asset has risen multi folds since the start of the year and Tesla itself made more profit holding their Bitcoin than what they have made from selling their highly popular cars.