Tesla Inc (Nasdaq: TSLA) boss Elon Musk announced Sunday that his electric car company will permit vehicle purchases using bitcoin once it can confirm that more of the energy used to mine for cryptocurrency is derived from clean energy sources.

In a tweet, Musk said, “When there’s confirmation of reasonable (-50%) clean energy usage by miners with positive future trend, Tesla will resume allowing bitcoin transactions.”

As cryptocurrencies have gained attention, use and popularity, the computing power used to create and track digital assets has come under scrutiny from critics who say it is a significant contributor of carbon emissions

Tesla revealed in an SEC filing in February that it purchased $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin and said it would begin accepting bitcoin as a payment method for its products.  

In May, the Palo Alto, California-based EV maker halted vehicle purchases with bitcoin due to environmental concerns. At the time, Musk said, “We are concerned about rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal, which has the worst emissions of any fuel.”

He also said that Tesla would hold the bitcoin it owns to use “as soon as mining transitions to more sustainable energy” and would be looking into other cryptocurrencies that require less energy for transactions. 

Musk’s latest social media comments about cryptocurrency follow remarks from Magda Wierzycka, chief executive officer of South African asset manager Sygnia, who said the Tesla chief’s tweets on bitcoin prices were “market manipulation” and should have prompted an investigation by the SEC.

Musk disputed her allegations of market manipulation on Sunday, explaining, “Tesla sold roughly 10 percent of its bitcoin holdings “to confirm BTC could be liquidated easily without moving market.”

During the first quarter, Tesla sold $272 million worth of “digital assets,” which helped it reduce operating losses by $101 million, CNBC reported. 

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Source: Equities News