Bitcoin Down Again After Musk-influenced Recovery
Bitcoin is down again after Tesla CEO Elon Musk helped it recover the other day as he signaled support for an apparent effort to improve the green credentials of the cryptocurrency. Bitcoin dropped to below $38,000 following a surge of 16 percent on Monday.
Musk, who had criticized the energy profile of Bitcoin mining last week, tweeted on Monday, “Spoke with North American Bitcoin Miners. They committed to publish current & planned renewable energy usage & to ask miners WW to do so. Potentially promising.”
Musk reportedly met up with a consortium of leading Bitcoin miners such as Riot Blockchain, Blockcap, Hut 8 and Michael Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital, to discuss the environmental impact of the mining industry and to bring transparency to the energy usage.
The recovery on Monday came after Bitcoin plummeted to a 14-week low last weekend on China prohibiting financial institutions and payment companies from providing cryptocurrency-related services and transactions. They also warned investors against speculative cryptocurrency trading.
Bitcoin had dropped on China’s warning to below $35,000, the lowest level since February, after hitting an all-time high of $64,895 in mid-April.
The world’s most popular cryptocurrency has been on a rollercoaster ride in recent times after it peaked in April, reacting to several tweets of Musk, regulatory hurdles as well as Turkey and China central banks’ crack down on the use of cryptocurrencies and crypto assets to purchase goods and services.
A few days ahead of the China ban, Bitcoin had slid to below $45,000 from the mid-April peak after Musk expressed concern through his tweet about the “increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal, which has the worst emissions of any fuel.”
Musk had backtracked from his earlier position and said he would no longer accept Bitcoin against the sale of Tesla electric vehicles due to its huge consumption of fossil fuels during the Bitcoin mining process.
The luxury electric car maker had disclosed in a regulatory filing in early February that it invested an aggregate of $1.5 billion in Bitcoin, expecting to accept the cryptocurrency as a form of payment for its products in the near future. Following Tesla’s move, Bitcoin began its surge to reach its all-time high in mid-April.
Musk, who was a strong supporter of cryptocurrencis, suggested later that Tesla may be planning to offload its bitcoin holdings, only to retract the statement immediately.
Bitcoin is currently trading at $37,994, down almost 1 percent in 24 hours and down more than 41 percent of its peak, as of this writing. BTC’s current market capitalization is $698.32 billion and 24 hour global trade volume is about $60 billion.
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