So multiple people have noted that the environmental concerns were exactly the same and very well known when Tesla originally started taking bitcoin as payment.<p>So what changed? Well I think the biggest notable difference between then and now is then bitcoin seemed to be going only up. Now it seems to be going down. When bitcoin continues to steadily go down, it is a significant concern because Tesla will have to take losses on the cars it sells and will have reduced gross margins, which will result in their stock price tanking.<p>Musk smartly decided he did not want to risk his half a trillion dollar company on random bitcoin fluctuations. It is probably the right decision (although certainly covered up with false reasoning) but he should have never reached this stage. Tesla should have never taken bitcoin without provisions for automatically converting it into one of the currencies it pays its costs in.
If TSLA has already dumped their Bitcoin, Elon just pulled off a highly lucrative pump and dump scheme.<p>1. Buy $1.5 billion in BTC<p>2. Announce TSLA will accept BTC, with the knowledge that very few people will actually do that, and public support from a major company will drive up the price of BTC.<p>3. Sell off your BTC at the higher price. A portion was sold in Q1 for a hefty profit already.<p>4. Rinse and repeat with DOGE?<p>The environmental impact was well known before they bought it, so it's a little odd that they'd reverse course because of that.
A large number of people were making comments about the environmental concerns of crypto the <i>instant</i> Tesla announced they were buying into Bitcoin. What changed?<p>It's really hard to argue Tesla's surprise here. (Elon Musk actually replied to Jack Dorsey saying "True" in response to his argument that Bitcoin is good for renewable energy: <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1385107878055317509" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1385107878055317509</a> )
A funny thing for Elon Musk to do would be:<p>Tesla Inc. buys some Bitcoin.<p>Tesla announces that Bitcoin is good now and that it bought some.<p>The price of Bitcoin goes up, because institutional adoption of Bitcoin is good for its price, but also because, by the Elon Markets Hypothesis, anything that Musk buys goes up.<p>Tesla sells some Bitcoin, making a profit.<p>Musk tweets that the price of Bitcoin is too high.
Bitcoin prices go down due to the Elon Markets Hypothesis.<p>Go to Step 1.<p><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-02-22/electric-bills-are-a-gamble-too?sref=1kJVNqnU" rel="nofollow">https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-02-22/electr...</a>
> Tesla has suspended vehicle purchases using Bitcoin.<p>The real reason is likely to be that few, if any, cars were bought with bitcoin.<p>This has been a recurring theme throughout Bitcoin's history that's played out hundreds of times in more or less the same way. Merchants discover Bitcoin, and think it is a (VISA|PayPal|Checking|etc.) replacement. Then they try using it that way. They're shocked to find very low to non-existent transaction volume.<p>When Bitcoin does work, it's in situations in which those making the payment have few other options. They're blocked from taking credit card payments or interacting with the banking system. It's easy to dismiss those use cases, but they're real.<p>> ... we intend to use it when mining transitions to more sustainable energy.<p>Makes no sense. Numerous articles document Bitcoin's energy sources, which are often hydroelectric due to its low cost.<p>The part about other cryptocurrencies using less energy is pie in the sky reference to proof-of-stake. Its security model has yet to be proven on any network worth discussing. Those claiming otherwise are selling snake oil.<p>All of this reveals a surprising lack of sophistication in the approach taken by both Tesla and Musk.
Tesla contributes to misinformation.<p>Bitcoin transactions do not, in and of themselves, consume mining energy. A Bitcoin block is validated by miners who use the same amount of energy, regardless if there are 1 or 1000 transactions in the block. Thus if Tesla cares about "energy per transaction", this metric can go down by actually increasing the number of transactions, ie. by continuing to accept Bitcoin as payments.<p>It's mind-boggling the number of people who can't wrap their head around this. The easiest way to reduce "energy per transaction" is to increase the number of transactions, whether it's on-chain, off-chain, or L2.
There is a far more eco-friendly alternative to proof-of-work (PoW) called proof-of-stake (PoS).<p>I wonder if a serious discussion will finally begin on moving Bitcoin to PoS. This will certainly have a strong opposition and will likely lead to a fork, i.e. two cryptocurrencies will exist at the same time, call them BTC-PoW and BTC-PoS.<p>In any case these news are a leap forward in the crypto space. IMO, replacing PoW by PoS is a bit like replacing incandescent light bulbs with LEDs at home.
It's a well known fact that Bitcoins are mined through renewable clean energy when over $60K and dirty coal dug by newborn baby labor when under $55K, therefore Musk did the right thing.<p>Cynicism aside, I was very curious if Musk can somehow push the crypto coins to be used as a currency. I guess that failed?<p>AFAIK manufacturing is a relatively low margin business that is sensible to price and supply fluctuations so it needs supply chain contracts for months if not years ahead which means using it as a currency that is not quickly converted to fiat must be like a huge challenge that only a financial machine building genius like Musk can solve.<p>Is there a data on how many cars were sold through BTC?
This is pretty interesting, either they did a proper research before putting 1.5B$ into it, in which case they would already be aware of the energy consumption, in which case, why announce this now? Or they put <i>that</i> much money without proper research which looks pretty bad for Tesla in my opinion.
Environment... right... I'm sure this has nothing to do with the 15% loss today or 20% over the last month and shareholders being upset. I'm sure Elon <i>just</i> learned about the environmental impacts of POW, because no one has been talking about that for the last 5 years. No one.
Total crypto meltdown now. Get rich quick exists only in the movies. No shortcuts to earning wealth . That's why so many people in personal finance and investing recommend index funds.
Maybe I'm being overly negative and conspiratorial, but with all the stuff Elon Musk has done around Dogecoin and the amount of effort he has put into pumping it up makes me wonder if this was some kind of ploy to devalue Bitcoin.<p>I also wonder if sometime in the next 6-12 months we'll hear that Tesla is looking to accept Dogecoin due to it being more environmentally responsible (I don't know if that is actually the case, but who knows what changes will happen in 6-12 months).
My armchair theory is that this is not some kind of advanced market manipulation but Musk actually changed his mind about this after initiating his carbon capture challenge. He seems like somebody who changes his mind a lot and he is fully in control of Tesla. It's pretty stupid that he "forgot" about the negative environmental impact of Bitcoin but it doesn't seem that far-fetched either.
I'm not sure what buying a Tesla with cryptocurrency looks like, but I realized if they're not careful, they could get run over during market swings and find they made $2,000 less on a sale. Today is a bad example, but the value is down 12% in 24 hours, some undoubtedly from this news. You can't afford spreads like that with Tesla's margins.<p>I think something like this is the real reason for this move. Bitcoin is inefficient when it comes to energy use, so it's a bad choice for small transactions, but for a single, large transaction, the environmental costs aren't <i>that</i> bad compared to <i>making a car.</i>
Purchasing big ticket items with Bitcoin will get stomped on in many regions in any case, as it is a way of dodging capital gains taxes. Or income tax if you are paid in bitcoin. Or GST/VAT. Same reason you can't swap a bar of gold for a car. I don't think governments are going to want to track official exchange rates for all the coins, and given coin volatility it probably wouldn't work well in any case.
Could it be that they noticed a hit to the Tesla brand with the green-conscious segment of their customer base due to the bitcoin investment which was starting to be reflected in a drop in car sales, and which they concluded wasn't going to be compensated by an increase in BTC's price. Therefore it was simply more strategic to reverse the decision publicly and strongly underline the green motive behind it?
It would be funny if right after the initial announcement, Satoshi comes out of retirement to buy a ten million Teslas out of BTC.<p>What would have happened…
I can’t believe no ones pointing out that maybe they aren’t accepting bitcoin right now because they believe it’s about to experience massive volatility and/or drop soon.
It’s funny that he says “suspend.” Was there some marketing collective unconscious that uses suspend instead of just “stop?”<p>It’s ok to stop things and then start them later.<p>This reminds me of twitters “permanent suspension” instead of saying “banned” or “blocked” or “removed.”<p>Seems funny to use suspend that means temporary for things that just naturally end. Not the end of the world, but one more example of unclear, harder to understand speech.
The question is not what the difference was then and now. The real question is why did Elon do what he did? It is very simple, he was trying to be the champion and pseudo figurehead of a group of people who would do anything to identify with him. In turn he gets free marketing, free cult figure status - same goes for smoking weed. I feel sorry for kids who lost stimulus checks believing him....
Pretty sure he saw this now deleted thread on Reddit:<p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/nb1rki/cryptocurrency_energy_usage_per_transaction/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/nb1rki/cryptocurr...</a><p>From ElegantPoop:<p>> Well, it would appear by this image we have ourselves a sub 1% of bitcoin per transaction. Winning.
As an occasional speculator in this stuff I've gone zero Bitcoin, quite a bit of Ethereum as I figure the energy and environmental cost of Bitcoin is too much while Ethereum is going proof of stake. I think it's probably the way things will go. I'm guessing Ethereum may take over as the largest cryptocurrency by market cap.
The reactions on Twitter are crazy, the Bitcoin fanatics who never cared about other cryptocurrencies are loudy.<p>But that's a great move for crypto as a whole : once the environmental issue is resolved in people's mind, crypto (not necessarily Bitcoins) might attract many more investors, and we will finally have GPUs!
To buy a Tesla in Bitcoin you have to (probably) pay capital gains tax, plus whatever network fees are required for the transaction. Therefore it never made sense to me why anyone would want to buy a Tesla in Bitcoin.
So what might those other cryptocurrencies Tesla is looking at be at the moment? PoS coins? Ethereum? The last time I checked for a more future proof Bitcoin alternative I stopped at Nano, but that was in early 2018.
So as the dusk settles -- this whole BTC and DOGE drama was intended as an indirect lesson to not short TSLA and keep their stock in range where it is completely removed from fundamentals for just a little bit longer?
This is so 2017 and a lot of people just don't want to realize it, because of personal gain.<p>Reminder: in 2017 woocommerce, square, steam, ... Started to add crypto currency as payment method and then removed it again.
How on earth do you secure that Bitcoin has been mined with sustainable energy?! Makes no sense. Did Elon Musk actually write this and why is it in a jpg image?
Hopefully people start to focus on cryptocurrencies with good fundamentals and actual use cases instead of tradition and dog memes.<p>Ada can probably benefit a lot from this, since it's proof of stake instead of proof of work and has potential to be used as an actual currency.<p>IMO, Monero also has good fundamentals and use cases (privacy). It's PoW, but from a technical standpoint, it's much, much better than Bitcoin as both cash and store of value.
mstr down 10% ah<p>hmmm back of envelope math shows potential default if btc falls below 10k. <a href="https://greyenlightenment.com/2021/03/16/microstrategys-bad-strategy/" rel="nofollow">https://greyenlightenment.com/2021/03/16/microstrategys-bad-...</a><p>I hope Mr Saylor saved some $ for the inevitable lawsuits. Very reckless on their part.
I have no judgement either way about misanthrope, but I think it's become clear that Elon Musk is one. He laughs when his words harm people. He intentionally causes suffering in the world. He isn't trying to save the planet, he's trying to <i>get off of it.</i> He coerced employees to work against their better health. He likes Trump, if you don't like Trump. He's eliminated right to repair. His rockets burn a lot of fuel and produce a lot of CO2. His satellites block the the view of existing telescope infrastructure and add a lot of material to LOE space. He's extracting billions of dollars from the tax payers and he's the richest guy on the planet while people are literally starving, homeless, and suicidal.<p>For many, who once believed in him, their eyes have been opened. More to come, I'm sure. Slowly but surely, humanists are starting to see that Elon isn't on their side...<p>Any of our sides... not even his own employees, customers, or shareholders.
These here might want to check out Gridcoin <a href="https://gridcoin.us" rel="nofollow">https://gridcoin.us</a>:<p>... while Bitcoin secures its network through an energy intensive[2] proof-of-work scheme, Gridcoin uses a more energy efficient proof-of-stake system. ... nearly all of the energy goes to science - <a href="https://en.bitcoinwiki.org/wiki/GridCoin" rel="nofollow">https://en.bitcoinwiki.org/wiki/GridCoin</a>
... Gridcoin compensates researchers for contributing computational power towards BOINC research using an energy-efficient Proof-of-Stake process, instead of generating heat and using computational power for a Proof-of-Work algorithm ... nearly all of the energy goes to science - <a href="https://gridcoin.us/wiki/" rel="nofollow">https://gridcoin.us/wiki/</a>
... do not require huge amounts of energy consumption to be mined. This makes PoS coins such as Gridcoin a more eco-friendly alternative .. - <a href="https://coincentral.com/what-is-gridcoin/" rel="nofollow">https://coincentral.com/what-is-gridcoin/</a>
Altcoins like SolarCoin and GridCoin are better for the environment - <a href="https://medium.com/@johnniec/altcoins-like-solarcoin-and-gridcoin-are-better-for-the-environment-730967a367a7" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/@johnniec/altcoins-like-solarcoin-and-gri...</a>
What if we could mine cryptocurrency using meaningful calculations with additional real-world benefits?- <a href="https://medium.com/adventures-in-volunteer-computing/cryptocurrencies-that-benefit-scientific-research-and-the-environment-f18a840336fb" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/adventures-in-volunteer-computing/cryptoc...</a>
Sustainable, efficient technology - With its unique PoR/PoS hybrid technology, the GRC blockchain uses PoS to secure its blockchain, while the entire computational capacity is devoted to performing computations for scientific research via PoR. This leads to a very efficient, and lean network, whose computational power is used for a noble purpose. - <a href="https://coinswitch.co/info/gridcoin/what-is-gridcoin" rel="nofollow">https://coinswitch.co/info/gridcoin/what-is-gridcoin</a>
One of the main advantages of Gridcoin is that crunching (“mining”) does useful scientific research - <a href="https://gridcoin.us/wiki/advantages-and-features" rel="nofollow">https://gridcoin.us/wiki/advantages-and-features</a>
Gridcoin attempts to address and ease the environmental energy impact of cryptocurrency mining through its proof-of-research and proof-of-stake protocols, as compared to the proof of work system used by Bitcoin - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gridcoin" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gridcoin</a><p>The project can be found at <a href="https://gridcoin.us" rel="nofollow">https://gridcoin.us</a><p>p.s. the wallet can run on all major OS, the database will sync before you can finish you lunch and research crunching can be done on almost all devices including raspberrypi, android and old pcs
@Elon I know how hard this decision was to make and state publicly. But thank you for listening to my concern and other skeptics of the Proof of Work based cryptocurrencies. Thank you.
This makes little sense — Elon knows the energy thing is BS. Rather suspect that some group has made him do it. On the day the inflation data is reported. A distraction for the financial media.<p>BTFD
This is an excellent news for cryptocurrencies. It is tragic that most real-word integrations seems to focus on Bitcoin because it was the first mover when there’s hundreds of other cryptocurrencies that are more efficient and green than bitcoin. Bitcoin is pretty much the same it was in 2009 whereas there’s been a LOT of advances to question why anyone would own or use bitcoin today.<p>Now I’ll take bets on what cryptocurrency they’ll settle on next. Will it be algorand? Avalanche? Celo? The choice will be hard.
Thank god, a bit of sanity. I was seriously second guessing my cybertruck reservation, not even that much because of the environmental concerns, I think these might be solvable as the technology matures, more because of the potential for deflationary tokens to cause financial system collapse with a non-zero chance of causing the downfall of human civilization ( <a href="https://benoitessiambre.com/specter.html" rel="nofollow">https://benoitessiambre.com/specter.html</a> ).<p>I'm hoping the lines about not selling and looking at other cryptocurrency options are empty statements to save face.