Bitcoin Price Jumps After Elon Musk Says Tesla Could Use It Again
Bitcoin hit a two-week peak just shy of $40,000 (roughly Rs. 29.2 lakhs) on Monday, after another weekend reacting to tweets from Tesla boss Elon Musk, who fended off criticism over his market influence and said Tesla sold Bitcoin but may resume transactions using it.
Bitcoin has gyrated to Musk’s views for months since Tesla announced a $1.5 billion (roughly Rs. 10,980 crores) Bitcoin purchase in February and said it would take the cryptocurrency in payment. He later said the electric car maker would not accept Bitcoin due to concerns over how mining the currency requires high energy use and contributes to climate change. Bitcoin price in India stood at 28.7 lakhs at 12pm IST on June 14.
“When there’s confirmation of reasonable (~50 percent) clean energy usage by miners with positive future trend, Tesla will resume allowing Bitcoin transactions,” Musk said on Twitter on Sunday.
Bitcoin rallied more than 9 percent after that message, breaking above its 20-day moving average, and it climbed a tiny bit further in Asia to hit $39,838.92 (roughly Rs. 29.1 lakhs).
“The market had been going through another round of correction over the weekend … until Elon Musk’s tweet of accepting BTC again for Tesla purchases changed sentiment,” said Bobby Ong, co-founder of crypto analytics website CoinGecko.
He said the market was also supported by software company and major Bitcoin-backer MicroStrategy raising half a billion dollars to buy Bitcoin.
