On May 13, Tesla boss Elon Musk (Elon Musk) announced that considering the impact of Bitcoin on the environment, Tesla will no longer accept Bitcoin payments. The news shocked the entire currency circle.

“We are concerned that Bitcoin mining and trading are causing skyrocketing consumption of fossil fuels, especially coal, which has the worst impact of all fossil fuel emissions,” Musk added, “Bitcoin’s recent energy consumption has been insane. "

Having said this, Musk reiterated on Twitter that he is still very confident in cryptocurrencies, and said that Tesla is looking for cryptocurrencies that consume less than 1% of Bitcoin's energy per transaction.

Over the past seven years, Musk's stance on Bitcoin has shifted from curiosity to full acceptance, and Bitcoin fans have long grown accustomed to the star entrepreneur becoming one of Bitcoin's most influential supporters. The sudden change of attitude has surprised Bitcoin fans, and many people "turned off fans and stepped back" on him.

Musk’s history with Bitcoin dates back to March 2014, when a Twitter user asked him his stance on cryptocurrencies, and he gave the elusive answer: “Well, now that Satoshi Nakamoto has been found , I think the matter is closed."

Also this year, at a summit, Musk was asked by the host about his views on Bitcoin. He said that Bitcoin might be a good thing, and added, "It is mainly used for illegal transactions."

It took a while before the Tesla CEO started paying serious attention to Bitcoin. In 2017, he denied rumors that he was the founder of Bitcoin on Twitter, also revealing: "A friend sent me some Bitcoins, but I don't know where they are."

The real change in position came in 2019, when recording a podcast with the technology investment company ARK, Musk said that Bitcoin is excellent, "Paper money is disappearing, and cryptocurrency is a better way to transfer value than paper. definitely."

In May 2020, Musk replied to JK Rowling, the author of "Harry Potter" on Twitter, saying that the recent actions of the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank made Bitcoin "look more reliable."

More than a month later, the Twitter accounts of many celebrities, including Musk, were hacked, and they posted a link saying that they transferred bitcoins to a certain address, and the transferee would be returned more bitcoins. Made around $2 million in a month.

Facts have proved that this is just a small episode, and Musk began to intensively express his support for Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency trump product.

In December 2020, Musk tweeted that Bitcoin was his "safe word," and later clarified that he was only joking.

Also on this day, Musk asked Mike Saylor, CEO of Microstrategy, a listed company that had previously bought a large number of bitcoins, on Twitter about the possibility of converting "large transactions" on Tesla's balance sheet into bitcoins. . Sailor replied, "I would like to share my script with you offline."

A month later, Musk updated his Twitter information to "#bitcoin", triggering many big Vs to follow suit. A later study showed that Musk's actions pushed up the price of Bitcoin by 18.99%.

In February 2021, Musk appeared on the audio social media platform, this time confirming very clearly that he is a supporter of Bitcoin: "Bitcoin is a good thing... I am late to this party."

Later that month, Musk followed through on his original promise, with Tesla announcing a $1.5 billion investment in Bitcoin. Mike Saylor was very happy. He said that there will be a large number of companies following in the footsteps of Tesla. In fact, there are indeed some companies that have included Bitcoin in their investment targets, including the magazine publisher "TIME", the Norwegian multinational company Aker ASA and Tesla. Latin American e-commerce platform Mercado Libre.

However, at the end of the first quarter of 2021, Tesla's financial report showed that the company had sold $272 million worth of bitcoin. In response, Musk clarified on Twitter that Tesla did this "essentially to prove that Bitcoin is very liquid and can replace cash on the balance sheet."

At this point, the crypto world already sees the Tesla CEO as one of Bitcoin’s biggest influencers. This didn’t last too long, and apparently, Musk’s stance on Bitcoin was less stable than its price.

2. Musk’s big change in attitude

The day before yesterday, after Musk expressed his concern about the energy consumption of Bitcoin, many Bitcoin supporters who had previously praised him were very disappointed, including Seiler, who had interacted with him before. He believed that 75% of Bitcoin’s electricity comes from renewable energy. renewable energy.

"Bitcoin does consume a lot of energy, but so does the dollar, and countless other industries, including Musk's own company."

In fact, Musk is right, Bitcoin's carbon emissions are indeed high. According to the University of Cambridge, Bitcoin consumes nearly 150 megawatt-hours of electricity per year, which means that if Bitcoin were a country, it would easily rank among the top 30 countries in the world for electricity consumption.

There are also different opinions on whether to use renewable resources. According to Cambridge University data, only 39% of the energy used to mine Bitcoin is renewable, while crypto asset management firm Coinshares puts the figure as high as 77%.

Bitcoin's computing power fell to its lowest level since November 2020 after a domestic coal mine closed due to flooding last month, suggesting the network's heavy reliance on fossil fuels such as coal.

3. After Musk

People are now speculating on what made Musk make a sudden U-turn, since Tesla invested $1.5 billion in Bitcoin just three months ago.

As Luke Sally, CEO of Ledgermatic, said, “Tesla’s original due diligence did not find it difficult to find Bitcoin’s energy usage problems, but this did not stop them from buying billions in Bitcoin assets at the end of last year. "

In Musk's position, Tesla cannot produce electric vehicles while supporting cryptocurrencies that affect the environment. However, according to his statement, Tesla also has no plans to sell its bitcoins.

In any case, as Musk's attitude shifted, his influence among the Bitcoin faith community plummeted, and the group also looked for the next A-line celebrity influencer.

This may not take too long, after all, just a few days ago, Facebook founder Zuckerberg announced to the world that his pet goat was named "Bitcoin".