Elon Musk's influence on cryptocurrencies isn't fading, after all.
A constant subject of his unfavorable Twitter posts, the Bitcoin price surged Wednesday thanks to Musk's revelation in The B-Word Conference that Tesla will likely start accepting payments in Bitcoin again.
Speaking further at a panel that included Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and ARK Invest founder CEO Cathie Wood, Musk stressed that "SpaceX, Tesla, and I own Bitcoin" and that they have not sold their Bitcoin amid the cryptocurrency's setbacks. Musk then declared that they do not intend to sell any of it.
During the talk, he also mentioned owning Ethereum and, quite expectedly, Dogecoin, The Verge reported.
Bitcoin traded eight percent higher on Wednesday mostly due to Musk's remarks, CNBC noted. As of this writing, Bitcoin is up 7.71 percent to $32,128.52 per coin.
Elon Musk: Tesla to Resume Bitcoin Payments With Renewable Shift
Musk said Bitcoin is "shifting a lot more toward renewables," stressing that "heavy-duty coal plants...have been shut down, especially in China." He attended The B-Word Conference, an initiative aimed to push Bitcoin mainstream use, after accepting an invite from Dorsey in a widely followed Twitter exchange.
The billionaiore CEO further noted that Bitcoin's renewable energy usage is "most likely at or above 50 percent and there is a trend toward increasing that number," although he said he would still confirm it. If this percentage is validated, Musk said "Tesla will most likely resume accepting Bitcoin," the CNBC report further said.
In May, Musk suspended vehicle purchases using Bitcoin as a payment option over the cryptocurrency's use of fossil fuels, such as coal, for mining.
The Chinese government since imposed a ban on cryptocurrencies and cracked down on China's crypto miners, who have since started to move elsewhere. Reports said these crypto miners have shifted operations to Kazakhstan, where fossil fuels produce 90 percent of the country's energy supply.
Bitcoin depends on computers called "miners" that process mathematical problems to secure the currency, thereby consuming vast amounts of electricity, New Scientist revealed. Since the ban, China's share of the global Bitcoin mining power declined from 75.5 percent to 46 percent, while Kazakhstan's share rose from 1.4 percent to 8.2 percent, data from the University of Cambridge's Center for Alternative Finance (CCAF) showed.
Other miners also started to patriate to the U.S., which is now the second biggest destination for Bitcoin miners, CCAF noted. It offers some of the cheapest sources of energy globally that are highly likely renewable. According to CNBC, Bitcoin miners that have since moved to the U.S. will be powered by renewables or gas offset by renewable energy credits, quoting Marathon Digital's Fred Theil. As such, Compass CEO Whit Gibbs said Bitcoin mining in the U.S. is more than 50 percent powered by renewables.
Bitcoin Price Prediction: Bitcoin Seen to Hit $66,000 by End of 2021
Given Musk's renewed support for Bitcoin and heightened investor confidence in the world's largest cryptocurrency, a panel of cryptocurrency experts forecasted that Bitcoin will overtake the US dollar in dominating global financial markets by 2050, a Forbes report said. These experts also see Bitcoin price to surge to $66,000 by the end of 2021.
Thomson Reuters technologist and futurist Joseph Raczynski even gave a bold forecast, further saying that Bitcoin will reach a value of $150,000 as it overtakes the dollar. This is due to Bitcoin's "fixed circulation and ease of transfer" as the main factors in moving to a "bankless model inherent in this ecosystem," Raczynski added in the Forbes report.
