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Tesla has suspended vehicle purchases using Bitcoin

406 points by seigando 5y ago

mrtksn 5y ago
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. Cynicism aside, I was very curious if Musk can somehow push the crypto coins to be used as a currency. I guess that failed? 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. Is there a data on how many cars were sold through BTC?
- throwaway4good 5y ago
  I find it shocking that only few people appear to understand why it makes no sense to talk about mining “transitioning to more sustainable energy”. Even here on hn.
  - mrtksn 5y ago
    What I don't get is, why people are talking about environmental impact per transaction. Transactions or not, the computers are churning constantly to solve the useless function that would produce the hash with the most 0s in it. It really doesn't have anything to do with transactions(the fees are only a fraction of the profits). The energy impact would be precisely correlated to the fiat price since the miners will be paying for the energy and equipment in fiat. Transactions or not, the higher the price, the dirtier the proof of work blockchain is. Just look at the most recent block: https://www.blockchain.com/btc/block/00000000000000000002865fa4f56e25c9e24f85231aed240b6f4fa68541994e https://www.blockchain.com/btc/block/00000000000000000002865... reward: 6.25BTC fees for transactions: 0.5BTC total revenue: 6.75BTC, that is ~ $350K at the moment. Each block is mined every 10min on average, so it is 2.1M per hour. So the total energy consumption is limited to $2.1M per hour or $1.5B per month at this price. It would be $150M if the price was $5k instead and $30B if the price goes to $1M per BTC. When that happens, 1 transaction will amount to the energy consumption of an American family for 1 year or more. At $1M per BTC, $360,000,000,000 worth of energy would be wasted per year on calculating a hash of a block that is functionally exactly the same with the same amount of transaction as the one calculated for $360, $3.6 or $0.03. I'm sure I'm missing something like investors betting on price increases, infrastructure elasticity etc. but the correlation must be roughly like that.
    - throwaway4good 5y ago
      Agreed - it is the mining rewards that drives the environmental impact. I think the reason people (media) talk about transactions is that blocks and mining rewards are hard to understand.
    - cesarb 5y ago
      People talk about environmental impact per transaction because a transaction is the "useful" part of Bitcoin (even the coins themselves do not really exist, they are actually the unspent outputs of transactions). Yes, since for now the block rewards are still much bigger than the transaction fees, the energy impact of miners is still not very correlated with the number of transactions; but you can still attribute all that cost to the "useful" work it did. That is: the transactions did not (directly) cause that cost, but they are the "benefits" of incurring that cost. It makes sense to think about how many "benefits" you got from a given amount of costs, or inversely, how much cost there was for each unit of "benefit". To put it another way, if the costs are identical, it's better to have 1000000 transactions than just 100 transactions; "environmental impact per transaction" (or its inverse, "transactions per unit of environmental impact") captures that perfectly.
      - ErikVandeWater 5y ago
        > To put it another way, if the costs are identical, it's better to have 1000000 transactions than just 100 transactions; "environmental impact per transaction" (or its inverse, "transactions per unit of environmental impact") captures that perfectly. I don't think it's possible to decouple # of transactions and the price of Bitcoin though. Every additional Bitcoin transaction proves it is a feasible means of exchange, driving the price higher.
      - somjeed 5y ago
        There are many other considerations that make a transaction possible. If you remove them, then a transaction wont have much value. For instance, security of chain's history or censorship resistance are required. These features can fall apart quickly with incentive misalignment. They are tail risks and easy to ignore until it happens
  - jude- 5y ago
    PoW runs just fine on 100% renewable energy. That PoW pollutes at all is because society allows it. Nothing stops the EPA (and similar bodies across the world) from requiring exchanges in their jurisdiction to do taint analysis on newly-mined coins in order to determine whether or not they came from a "certified-green" miner, and if not, apply an extra carbon tax on them (or deny their sale outright).
- throwaway4good 5y ago
  I wouldn’t be surprised if no cars were sold by Tesla via Bitcoin. A transaction of that sorts would certainly trigger various anti-money laundering regulations where I am from (somewhere in the EU).
minimaxir 5y ago
A large number of people were making comments about the environmental concerns of crypto the instant Tesla announced they were buying into Bitcoin. What changed? 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: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1385107878055317509 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1385107878055317509 )
- ffggvv 5y ago
  they bought in Q4, sold 1/4 of it in Q1, which allowed them to have a profit that quarter since they lose money on selling cars. Now china car sales are down this quarter and they realize they need to cash out completely.
  - rawtxapp 5y ago
    "Tesla will not be selling any Bitcoin..." from the tweet.
    - ffggvv 5y ago
      thats what he said before but magically sold some in q1. wonder how much he dumped before this statement.
      - sanxiyn 5y ago
        Maybe Elon Musk dumped his coin, but Tesla is a public company. Tesla almost certainly didn't dump its coin without public notice.
        cmorgan31 5y ago
        Is there anything actually binding and backing this statement? I’d love to know if there’s anything at all in regards to how public companies have to treat crypto currency ownership.
bourgwaletariat 5y ago
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 get off of it. 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. 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... Any of our sides... not even his own employees, customers, or shareholders.
rasputnik6502 5y ago
Yep someone has exchanged his Muskcoin into a big pile of real money. Not inrerested obviously in reverse direction of exchange
henvic 5y ago
I posted this article Cryptocurrency Tulipmania: Bitcoin is a shitcoin monday about how Bitcoin is a shitcoin for many reasons, especially because proof-of-work sucks. I'm glad to see it being abandoned by Tesla! https://henvic.dev/posts/bitcoin/ https://henvic.dev/posts/bitcoin/
paulpauper 5y ago
Musk would make a good politician. He mastered the art of the flip flop. This is why taking financial advice from twitter is generally a bad idea.
- Barrin92 5y ago
  also taking crypto gambling advice from one of the worlds richest people when you have 10k in the bank might not be a good idea either
- lolthishuman 5y ago
  What’s the flip flop? The reasoning is sound and it’s technically based on new data and key decisions.
- newacct583 5y ago
  Is it a flip flop or did he just... change his mind? I mean, the guy has a long history of tweet-first-think-later. It seems not unreasonable to me that he got suddenly and violently into cryptocoins, did the same thing people here do every week when they learn about it for the first time, and then (being a billionaire) had trusted folks come to him to carefully explain all the externalities and his generally-strong-if-highly-distractable analytical mind made a different decision with better evidence. I mean... I'm not saying Tesla's weird daliance with and then rejection of Bitcoin is particularly rational. I'm just saying it doesn't seem insincere.
  - dalbasal 5y ago
    Flip flopping is changing your mind, or your decision once its on record. The fact that we're calling it flip flopping just means that we're thinking of Musk in the same terms we think of a politician.
  - learnstats2 5y ago
    The concept that one person impulsively changed their mind is not correct. The board of Tesla will have agreed the plans.
- 5y ago
throwaway4good 5y ago
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?
- paulpauper 5y ago
  cuz of the character limit . elon and tesla bypass the usual PR firms and just post to twitter
  - throwaway4good 5y ago
    This is short enough for a multi tweet tweet which would be the natural thing if it was actually Elon who wrote it. He doesn’t strike me as the sort of the guy who would put his statement inside an image and I would expect him to understand enough about Bitcoin to know that there is no way to guarantee it being mined “sustainably”.
    - eli 5y ago
      You think maybe greenpeace had him locked in a room?
      - throwaway4good 5y ago
        No. Some one else wrote that statement he posted ... and it was carefully vetted with pr and legal.
  - throwaway4good 5y ago
    Pretty sure this one has been through both PR and legal.
- prostoalex 5y ago
  Isn't mining highly concentrated?
- CTDOCodebases 5y ago
Ericson2314 5y ago
Hah! Many layers of hypocrisy here, heh, but at least this is a better place to end p. I hope this triggers a sell off.
- adamhearn 5y ago
  Why do you hope for a sell off?
  - SilverRed 5y ago
    It lowers the price of bitcoin and the price ties pretty closely with the number of miners.
  - Ericson2314 5y ago
    Because Bitcoin is stupid and bad.
paulpauper 5y ago
BTC still dropping even 30 minutes after news. so much for that EMH assumption of all public info being digested by market instantly
- valine 5y ago
  Finally, I've been waiting for the crypto bust. GPUs have been out of stock since last November.
  - prox 5y ago
    Time for Crypto to go away for a while as it reinvents itself. In it’s current iteration it’s speculative, the only source from which its derives its value, which is shakey at best, and solves absolutely nothing atm.
- ArkanExplorer 5y ago
  It Tesla believes that Bitcoin is environmentally unfriendly, the logical thing to do is to sell all of its coins, as a lower price will lead to a lower level of mining intensity.
bitcoinmonger 5y ago
Has anyone considered the environmental impact of electric vehicles? The electricity is generated in the most part by fossil fuels, so how are they in any way a green alternative?
rawtxapp 5y ago
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 that much money without proper research which looks pretty bad for Tesla in my opinion.
- paulpauper 5y ago
  Yeah, I think that is just the excuse, not the actual reason. How could he not know about this already?
- lolthishuman 5y ago
  There’s more than those two you know…
- SomewhatLikely 5y ago
  Is it possible the bitcoin position was a hedge against chip prices? One would expect the two prices to be correlated. Price of bitcoin goes up -> more miners buy chips. I don't know, their bitcoin position otherwise doesn't make sense to me.
- drexlspivey 5y ago
  Most likely they changed course due to media/public backlash criticizing them for BTCs energy usage.
  - quickthrower2 5y ago
    I think market manipulation is most likely.
shiado 5y ago
Looks like my knife catch orders might get triggered tonight lmao thanks Elon.
- agumonkey 5y ago
  happy juggling
  - shiado 5y ago
    I stopped my bots and removed all orders. This is quite a special day on the crypto markets, perhaps the most interesting since last year.
Geee 5y ago
I hope he realizes that there aren't any cryptocurrencies that don't use energy & are properly decentralized.
- intotheabyss 5y ago
  Except of course for the number 2 crypto by mcap which is months away from proof of stake.
  - cmckn 5y ago
    > months away This is optimistic, to say the least. I think ETH2 is a great idea, and is headed in a great direction; but if you take a look at any of the client implementations (Prysm being the most popular), it's not exactly rock-solid software that I would stake $135,000 on. Not to mention that many of the proposed benefits of ETH2 are not in Phase 0. I mean hell, you can't even withdraw your validator's balance yet.
  - BTCOG 5y ago
    Coming Soon! (For 5 years!)
  - Geee 5y ago
    I said "properly decentralized". Proof-of-stake isn't strong enough.
  - joshschreuder 5y ago
    A more skeptical person would say it’s been months away from proof of stake for years now… I’m not bearish on this in particular but let’s wait for the thing to actually happen before celebrating it as a win I reckon.
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  Algorand from what I can tell... but the tooling to run nodes will hopefully improve
ObserverNeutral 5y ago
This guy is the most impulsive human, maybe ever. He'd sell his Futurama mom for a quick stock pump.
gregoriol 5y ago
So after his statement on Dogecoin on SNL a few days ago, Muskito is now officially into manupilating crypto prices?
- Ekaros 5y ago
  Yeah, he got the experience on stock market already. So why not move to next target as penalties are laughable...
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Andys 5y ago
Strong suspicion Elon is buying more BTC now that the price is dropping.
hristov 5y ago
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. 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. 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.
- hellbannedguy 5y ago
  Or, did someone higher up leak information to Musk on upcoming regulation? I guess we might know if Musk sells his coins. (And no--I have no evidence. I just know wealthy boys get information. Even the people who didn't like Musk did 180's after his ingratiating performance Saturday Night Live. For the record, I have always liked Musk.)
- rawtxapp 5y ago
  That doesn't make sense, they are still holding a very large amount of it, why would they put this out and decrease the value of their own holdings?
  - throwaway6734 5y ago
    Isn't it possible they're dumping the rest of their holdings?
    - Applejinx 5y ago
      That or they are certain they will get burned sooner or later, and therefore even if they tank the value of their holdings it's at a time of their choosing and with an amount that's predictable. Contrast with the scenario where they keep doing it, steadily increasing their bitcoin holdings and even seeing the proportion of sales using bitcoin increase… and THEN hit a wall, not of their own choosing, and see the value collapse. Even if they are not dumping their holdings at all, there's still a case to be made for pulling a plug at a time they control, over an amount they control. If it collapses, they can put a hard limit on how much they lose: that being, the previous value of their entire bitcoin holdings.
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aazaa 5y ago
> Tesla has suspended vehicle purchases using Bitcoin. The real reason is likely to be that few, if any, cars were bought with bitcoin. 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. 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. > ... we intend to use it when mining transitions to more sustainable energy. Makes no sense. Numerous articles document Bitcoin's energy sources, which are often hydroelectric due to its low cost. 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. All of this reveals a surprising lack of sophistication in the approach taken by both Tesla and Musk.
- bun_at_work 5y ago
  > All of this reveals a surprising lack of sophistication in the approach taken by both Tesla and Musk. Unless it was a pump and dump scheme. Granted, he says they won't be selling it until later, but they can just say they've decided it'll never be viable later, then sell it. This tracks with your statement that mining transactions using more sustainable energy doesn't make sense. Since crypto isn't regulated by the SEC, it seems like leveraging Tesla for a pump and dumb to generate capital is _not illegal_.
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    Crypto that is considered securities (by meeting the Howey test) is regulated by the SEC. Crypto that is treated as a commodity is regulated by the CFTC.
    - kristianp 5y ago
      As far as I know all crypto is considered securities by the IRS.
wzy 5y ago
This guy really had John Q. Public thinking he is one of them
varsketiz 5y ago
Why the change happens now? My speculation is internal pressure from employees who don't want to accept the externalities.
jensvdh 5y ago
Great, let's bring Bitcoin down to ~$200 or whatever it's actual value is.
frankbreetz 5y ago
A funny thing for Elon Musk to do would be: Tesla Inc. buys some Bitcoin. Tesla announces that Bitcoin is good now and that it bought some. 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. Tesla sells some Bitcoin, making a profit. Musk tweets that the price of Bitcoin is too high. Bitcoin prices go down due to the Elon Markets Hypothesis. Go to Step 1. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-02-22/electric-bills-are-a-gamble-too?sref=1kJVNqnU https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-02-22/electr...
- agumonkey 5y ago
  There's also a few potential compounding layers in this. - big corp buys btc, makes btc legit, raises confidence and price - new cryptomillionaire find new friend in musk, and consider tesla the car brand of crypto, spend their money on tesla, including bitcoin, so tesla bitcoin wallet grows, while the company value grows while the asset grows.. it's all shower thought but I found it a fun business trick
- londons_explore 5y ago
  Would such a strategy be illegal?
  - ivalm 5y ago
    Only if it is provable that the intent was to trick other people into buying Bitcoin so you can sell it (pump and dump). For something big like Bitcoin it would be hard to prove. For penny stocks it happens and does get prosecuted.
  - iaw 5y ago
    In most asset classes: yes. In crypto: nope.
  - sarsway 5y ago
    Welcome to the wild west of Crypto. People have been doing this or similar schemes since 2010. But I don't think that was Elon's intention. He has pretty good point after all. Bitcoin just produced too much unnecessary CO2, so it's simply not gonna work as a money replacement. I think more people start to realize this, but are still a bit reluctant to sell their BTC.
Arcuru 5y ago
If TSLA has already dumped their Bitcoin, Elon just pulled off a highly lucrative pump and dump scheme. 1. Buy $1.5 billion in BTC 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. 3. Sell off your BTC at the higher price. A portion was sold in Q1 for a hefty profit already. 4. Rinse and repeat with DOGE? The environmental impact was well known before they bought it, so it's a little odd that they'd reverse course because of that.
- londons_explore 5y ago
  > The environmental impact was well known before they bought it, so it's a little odd that they'd reverse course because of that. I wonder if the original decision to accept bitcoin was a quick decision by the CEO, but now the rest of the company and the shareholders have persuaded them it isn't a public relations risk they should be taking. Imagine the headline - "Every Tesla EV bought with bitcoin gives off more CO2 than a gas car!"
  - qayxc 5y ago
    Or - and this might sound a little tin foil-hat - this was a strategic move to send the price of Bitcoin down, so they can buy the 10% they sold in Q1 back at lower price. Crypto is an unregulated market with ridiculously high volatility and announcements or big buy-ins are a relatively safe method of controlling the price (to a degree). It's a win-win in the eyes of the management - great PR ("see - they DO care") and dropping crypto prices...
    - drited 5y ago
      While a popular opinion, that does sound more tin foil hat to me than the alternative that he updated his knowledge in the last few months and/or had his opinion on Bitcoin changed by communication from others in the organisation. Tesla is a 568 billion market cap company. The profit it made on Bitcoin doesn't move the needle enough to justify some elaborate scheme to pump and dump. Musk is no stranger to whimsical decisions that, while involving a large amount of money in absolute terms, are not material in the context of the much larger value of his shares in Tesla.
mensetmanusman 5y ago
It would be funny if right after the initial announcement, Satoshi comes out of retirement to buy a ten million Teslas out of BTC. What would have happened…
- xwolfi 5y ago
  *to sell a million BTC to clear his conscience
Havoc 5y ago
He’ll do Eth next. Or well when it hits PoS I guess
ineedasername 5y ago
For anyone that has had their bitcoins for a little while, cashing them out to buy a car will incur a hefty capitol gains tax to do so.
- baby 5y ago
  Does it though? If you actually use bitcoin like a currency to purchase goods then I doubt these laws would work the same.
  - Thrymr 5y ago
    Oh yes it does, according to the IRS: > Q16. Will I recognize a gain or loss if I exchange my virtual currency for other property? > A16. Yes. If you exchange virtual currency held as a capital asset for other property, including for goods or for another virtual currency, you will recognize a capital gain or loss. For more information on capital gains and capital losses, see Publication 544, Sales and Other Dispositions of Assets. Source: https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/frequently-asked-questions-on-virtual-currency-transactions https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/freq...
    - chki 5y ago
      Which makes sense, right? Otherwise I'll declare my stock and property to be currency and directly exchange it at the dealership for a new car, avoiding the capital gain tax.
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    Yep, same thing as investing in a foreign currency that increases relative to the USD. When you convert it into a purchase you are realizing a gain, which is taxed. Heck, even savings account interest is taxable.
- seabass 5y ago
  In this case you're not "cashing" them out, though. You are directly purchasing goods. Does that sort of thing still incur capital gains tax in the US?
baby 5y ago
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. Now I’ll take bets on what cryptocurrency they’ll settle on next. Will it be algorand? Avalanche? Celo? The choice will be hard.
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  Algorand seems the most promising in my opinion.
  - space_rock 5y ago
    Pump that token $$$!
NicoJuicy 5y ago
This is so 2017 and a lot of people just don't want to realize it, because of personal gain. Reminder: in 2017 woocommerce, square, steam, ... Started to add crypto currency as payment method and then removed it again.
young_unixer 5y ago
Hopefully people start to focus on cryptocurrencies with good fundamentals and actual use cases instead of tradition and dog memes. 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. 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.
jcaldas 5y ago
There is a far more eco-friendly alternative to proof-of-work (PoW) called proof-of-stake (PoS). 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. 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.
- anonporridge 5y ago
  Vanishingly unlikely. PoS would effectively destroy bitcoin's immutability, which is a huge part of the value proposition. And more importantly, a huge part of it's core principles. Coins like Ethereum that have already proven that immutability isn't a core principle (DAO fork) are fine moving to PoS. Most coins don't need their own PoW though. It's likely that we'll end up with one PoW chain and everyone else can periodically checkpoint themselves into bitcoin's immutable blockchain.
  - trompetenaccoun 5y ago
    Ethereum was running on PoW when that happened. If anything you've just made an argument against PoW and miner centralization, where they can just get together and roll back the chain. The same would be possible in Bitcoin and while it hasn't happened yet there, we've had instances of large mining pools trying to censor transactions. A PoS system with sufficient decentralization would actually be more resilient against both these threats than a PoW one where mining is done by ASICs, which means large mining centers as opposed to individuals running an Ethereum node from their homes.
    - anonporridge 5y ago
      This is a reasonable criticism. Let me try to counter. PoW doesn't protect you from a large enough cabal of power (in Eth's case, developers and whale bag holders) controlling the direction of the chain, or censoring entities they don't like from continuing to contribute. What it does do is ensure that this large cabal can't erase history that happened. The only reason Ethereum was able to fork was because it was still young, they moved very fast, and there was enough external incentive from all parties to ignore the lost mining costs. And even with all that, Ethereum Classic still exists with all the PoW post DAO hack preserved. On the other hand, PoS has no cost associated with writing the blockchain as far back as you want. If a majority cabal of stakers agree to rewrite history, they just do it. They can rewrite the chain from the dawn of proof of stake with whatever changes they want and it looks equally valid as the "true chain". No energy intensive hashes needed. With PoS, you have to compromise a large enough number of stakers to mutate the chain. Very little cost after that. With PoW, you not only have to compromise the miners, but you need to force them to burn tons of real world energy to catch up to the current block to rewrite the chain. Insanely expensive and effectively impossible the farther back in time you go.
chris_wot 5y ago
Why would you purchase anything when it holds such value that eventually just increases? ;-)
Glench 5y ago
https://chiapower.org/ https://chiapower.org/
- randomhodler84 5y ago
  Chia is a great project, but proof of space and time is just another expression of proof of work. In this case the work is to procure disks, which are made from stuff, toxic stuff. I don’t think an environmental argument for chia works, no solar/wind farm can magic up Silicon for SSDs.
  - Glench 5y ago
    SSDs aren't required for Chia, they're just faster for plotting which is a one-time process anyway. Once plots are made they can be "farmed" (mined) indefinitely for the energy cost of idling drives. So the environmental cost is an up-front capital cost instead of an ongoing power cost which in my opinion is a lot better. And this is not to forget that the storage market is already huge anyway and that "procuring drives" can be used for storage other than Chia, whereas the energy wasted by ASIC Bitcoin miners is just a complete waste.
    - randomhodler84 5y ago
      Wouldn’t be reusing those disks for anything that mattered. It’s “waste by proof of buying drives for mining.” Nothing wrong with that! Proof of work is all that matters. But it’s the same thing, it’s not actually a waste at all and it is equivalent to bitcoin. Spending energy is how we make coins trustlessly. It’s a Good thing.
seaourfreed 5y ago
Time for BTC to grow up. Grow up to PoS. And get transaction fees from $32 USD/each to < $1.00 USD each
- rawtxapp 5y ago
  Transaction fees on Bitcoin are ~2-4sat/byte (around ~1$ for most common transactions), I've been able to consolidate a lot of change outputs. Ether fees on the other hand are through the roof because of all the meme coins, it's been averaging ~200-300 gwei lately, even hitting 500+gwei today!
felixbraun 5y ago
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?
shruubi 5y ago
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. 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).
- broighbrobroigh 5y ago
  He's a child who wants attention, and seeing that Vitalik got some today by trashing Shibua means he's going to try and pump Shibua next.
- erentz 5y ago
  > 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 mean his tweet right before this announcement was a poll asking just that, if Tesla should accept Dogecoin. So yeah. The guy is a clown. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1392030108274159619 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1392030108274159619
- perl4ever 5y ago
  It seems like Ethereum is what's going up at the moment. No idea why.
  - quickthrower2 5y ago
    Might be demand for shittokens. You need ETH for the transaction fees.
  - broighbrobroigh 5y ago
    >> No idea why. Mainstream adoption, Visa & Goldman Sachs using it as a settlement layer, actual utility, defi, etc...
    - 5y ago
lettergram 5y ago
Pretty sure he saw this now deleted thread on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/nb1rki/cryptocurrency_energy_usage_per_transaction/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/nb1rki/cryptocurr... From ElegantPoop: > Well, it would appear by this image we have ourselves a sub 1% of bitcoin per transaction. Winning.
- delecti 5y ago
  The image on that post has been deleted, and I don't really understand ElegantPoop's comment. Can you explain why the original thread would have been relevant to the Tesla situation?
blondie9x 5y ago
@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.
ak_111 5y ago
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?
throwaway4good 5y ago
And Bitcoin is under 50K. Thank you, Elon, for saving the environment with just a single tweet.
mrb 5y ago
Tesla contributes to misinformation. 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. 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.
- MauranKilom 5y ago
  > same amount of energy, regardless if there are 1 or 1000 transactions in the block. Last I heard, there was a physical limit to the number of transactions in a block (and no intent of increasing that number). > this metric can go down by actually increasing the number of transactions, ie. continuing to accept Bitcoin as payments. Are you implying that there are too few transactions to fill blocks right now, so Tesla accepting bitcoin will make blocks fuller? You also seem to be fully ignoring that the main energy spend is in the mining, not the validation. More transactions (with fixed # of tx/10 min) = higher fees = more mining competition = more energy expenditure.
  - mrb 5y ago
    «Last I heard, there was a physical limit to the number of transactions in a block (and no intent of increasing that number).» There is no limit when transactions happen in L2 (or off-chain) «You also seem to be fully ignoring that the main energy spend is in the mining, not the validation» Mining and validation are one and the same. A block simultaneously mines new coin and validates existing transactions.
    - stale2002 5y ago
      > There is no limit when transactions happen in L2 Basically nobody uses L2 transactions. The amount of actual money that goes through 2nd layer solutions, is very small compared to on chain transactions.
rkagerer 5y ago
This is simple. The PR blowback was more intense than expected and they're trying to salvage their brand values.
paulpauper 5y ago
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.
- yks 5y ago
  Which is all fine and good until "get rich quick" are forced into your index funds.
paulpauper 5y ago
mstr down 10% ah hmmm back of envelope math shows potential default if btc falls below 10k. https://greyenlightenment.com/2021/03/16/microstrategys-bad-strategy/ https://greyenlightenment.com/2021/03/16/microstrategys-bad-... I hope Mr Saylor saved some $ for the inevitable lawsuits. Very reckless on their part.
kordlessagain 5y ago
Musk is a showman who has vision, but no lasting power.
whoisterencelee 5y ago
These here might want to check out Gridcoin https://gridcoin.us https://gridcoin.us: ... 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 - https://en.bitcoinwiki.org/wiki/GridCoin https://en.bitcoinwiki.org/wiki/GridCoin ... 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 - https://gridcoin.us/wiki/ https://gridcoin.us/wiki/ ... do not require huge amounts of energy consumption to be mined. This makes PoS coins such as Gridcoin a more eco-friendly alternative .. - https://coincentral.com/what-is-gridcoin/ https://coincentral.com/what-is-gridcoin/ Altcoins like SolarCoin and GridCoin are better for the environment - https://medium.com/@johnniec/altcoins-like-solarcoin-and-gridcoin-are-better-for-the-environment-730967a367a7 https://medium.com/@johnniec/altcoins-like-solarcoin-and-gri... What if we could mine cryptocurrency using meaningful calculations with additional real-world benefits?- https://medium.com/adventures-in-volunteer-computing/cryptocurrencies-that-benefit-scientific-research-and-the-environment-f18a840336fb https://medium.com/adventures-in-volunteer-computing/cryptoc... 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. - https://coinswitch.co/info/gridcoin/what-is-gridcoin https://coinswitch.co/info/gridcoin/what-is-gridcoin One of the main advantages of Gridcoin is that crunching (“mining”) does useful scientific research - https://gridcoin.us/wiki/advantages-and-features https://gridcoin.us/wiki/advantages-and-features 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 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gridcoin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gridcoin The project can be found at https://gridcoin.us https://gridcoin.us 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
- toralero 5y ago
BenoitEssiambre 5y ago
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 ( https://benoitessiambre.com/specter.html https://benoitessiambre.com/specter.html ). I'm hoping the lines about not selling and looking at other cryptocurrency options are empty statements to save face.
chki 5y ago
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.
paulpauper 5y ago
People mad on twitter at elon. Welcome to the world of finance. Ruthless and unpredictable.
godelski 5y ago
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 just learned about the environmental impacts of POW, because no one has been talking about that for the last 5 years. No one.
randomhodler84 5y ago
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. BTFD
DanielleMolloy 5y ago
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.
- redisman 5y ago
  Tesla coin? It’s not that hard to fork a GitHub repo and do a search and replace
dehrmann 5y ago
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. 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 that bad compared to making a car.
DonHopkins 5y ago
Tesla should just cut out the middleman and make coal powered cars.
- quickthrower2 5y ago
  They’d need to burn silicon too’
  - DonHopkins 5y ago
    But burning silicon is even more dangerous than burning coal! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon-burning_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon-burning_process >When a star has completed the silicon-burning phase, no further fusion is possible. The star catastrophically collapses and may explode in what is known as a Type II supernova. >The central portion of the star is now crushed into either a neutron star or, if the star is massive enough, a black hole. The outer layers of the star are blown off in an explosion known as a Type II supernova that lasts days to months.
deleted 5y ago
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stubish 5y ago
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.
- quickthrower2 5y ago
  More likely they’ll allow it but the seller has to report the info to the tax agency, who automatically sends the bill to the citizen.
g42gregory 5y ago
Maybe I am a bit too cynical, but I wonder if Elon Musk is looking to buy more Bitcoin and decided to depress the price? Would this even be legal?
gkfasdfasdf 5y ago
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.
georgeplusplus 5y ago
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.
templarchamp 5y ago
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....
tim333 5y ago
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.
antpls 5y ago
The reactions on Twitter are crazy, the Bitcoin fanatics who never cared about other cryptocurrencies are loudy. 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!
prepend 5y ago
It’s funny that he says “suspend.” Was there some marketing collective unconscious that uses suspend instead of just “stop?” It’s ok to stop things and then start them later. This reminds me of twitters “permanent suspension” instead of saying “banned” or “blocked” or “removed.” 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.
- mumblemumble 5y ago
  Suspend is an absolutely bog standard term to use in this context. Perhaps even preferable to "stop", for vague reasons having to do with this tweet being something the SEC is probably paying close attention to.

406 points by seigando 5y ago

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. Cynicism aside, I was very curious if Musk can somehow push the crypto coins to be used as a currency. I guess that failed? 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. Is there a data on how many cars were sold through BTC?

throwaway4good 5y ago
I find it shocking that only few people appear to understand why it makes no sense to talk about mining “transitioning to more sustainable energy”. Even here on hn.
- mrtksn 5y ago
  What I don't get is, why people are talking about environmental impact per transaction. Transactions or not, the computers are churning constantly to solve the useless function that would produce the hash with the most 0s in it. It really doesn't have anything to do with transactions(the fees are only a fraction of the profits). The energy impact would be precisely correlated to the fiat price since the miners will be paying for the energy and equipment in fiat. Transactions or not, the higher the price, the dirtier the proof of work blockchain is. Just look at the most recent block: https://www.blockchain.com/btc/block/00000000000000000002865fa4f56e25c9e24f85231aed240b6f4fa68541994e https://www.blockchain.com/btc/block/00000000000000000002865... reward: 6.25BTC fees for transactions: 0.5BTC total revenue: 6.75BTC, that is ~ $350K at the moment. Each block is mined every 10min on average, so it is 2.1M per hour. So the total energy consumption is limited to $2.1M per hour or $1.5B per month at this price. It would be $150M if the price was $5k instead and $30B if the price goes to $1M per BTC. When that happens, 1 transaction will amount to the energy consumption of an American family for 1 year or more. At $1M per BTC, $360,000,000,000 worth of energy would be wasted per year on calculating a hash of a block that is functionally exactly the same with the same amount of transaction as the one calculated for $360, $3.6 or $0.03. I'm sure I'm missing something like investors betting on price increases, infrastructure elasticity etc. but the correlation must be roughly like that.
  - throwaway4good 5y ago
    Agreed - it is the mining rewards that drives the environmental impact. I think the reason people (media) talk about transactions is that blocks and mining rewards are hard to understand.
  - cesarb 5y ago
    People talk about environmental impact per transaction because a transaction is the "useful" part of Bitcoin (even the coins themselves do not really exist, they are actually the unspent outputs of transactions). Yes, since for now the block rewards are still much bigger than the transaction fees, the energy impact of miners is still not very correlated with the number of transactions; but you can still attribute all that cost to the "useful" work it did. That is: the transactions did not (directly) cause that cost, but they are the "benefits" of incurring that cost. It makes sense to think about how many "benefits" you got from a given amount of costs, or inversely, how much cost there was for each unit of "benefit". To put it another way, if the costs are identical, it's better to have 1000000 transactions than just 100 transactions; "environmental impact per transaction" (or its inverse, "transactions per unit of environmental impact") captures that perfectly.
    - ErikVandeWater 5y ago
      > To put it another way, if the costs are identical, it's better to have 1000000 transactions than just 100 transactions; "environmental impact per transaction" (or its inverse, "transactions per unit of environmental impact") captures that perfectly. I don't think it's possible to decouple # of transactions and the price of Bitcoin though. Every additional Bitcoin transaction proves it is a feasible means of exchange, driving the price higher.
    - somjeed 5y ago
      There are many other considerations that make a transaction possible. If you remove them, then a transaction wont have much value. For instance, security of chain's history or censorship resistance are required. These features can fall apart quickly with incentive misalignment. They are tail risks and easy to ignore until it happens
- jude- 5y ago
  PoW runs just fine on 100% renewable energy. That PoW pollutes at all is because society allows it. Nothing stops the EPA (and similar bodies across the world) from requiring exchanges in their jurisdiction to do taint analysis on newly-mined coins in order to determine whether or not they came from a "certified-green" miner, and if not, apply an extra carbon tax on them (or deny their sale outright).
throwaway4good 5y ago
I wouldn’t be surprised if no cars were sold by Tesla via Bitcoin. A transaction of that sorts would certainly trigger various anti-money laundering regulations where I am from (somewhere in the EU).

minimaxir 5y ago

A large number of people were making comments about the environmental concerns of crypto the instant Tesla announced they were buying into Bitcoin. What changed? 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: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1385107878055317509 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1385107878055317509 )

ffggvv 5y ago
they bought in Q4, sold 1/4 of it in Q1, which allowed them to have a profit that quarter since they lose money on selling cars. Now china car sales are down this quarter and they realize they need to cash out completely.
- rawtxapp 5y ago
  "Tesla will not be selling any Bitcoin..." from the tweet.
  - ffggvv 5y ago
    thats what he said before but magically sold some in q1. wonder how much he dumped before this statement.
    - sanxiyn 5y ago
      Maybe Elon Musk dumped his coin, but Tesla is a public company. Tesla almost certainly didn't dump its coin without public notice.
      - cmorgan31 5y ago
        Is there anything actually binding and backing this statement? I’d love to know if there’s anything at all in regards to how public companies have to treat crypto currency ownership.

bourgwaletariat 5y ago

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 get off of it. 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. 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... Any of our sides... not even his own employees, customers, or shareholders.

rasputnik6502 5y ago

Yep someone has exchanged his Muskcoin into a big pile of real money. Not inrerested obviously in reverse direction of exchange

henvic 5y ago

I posted this article Cryptocurrency Tulipmania: Bitcoin is a shitcoin monday about how Bitcoin is a shitcoin for many reasons, especially because proof-of-work sucks. I'm glad to see it being abandoned by Tesla! https://henvic.dev/posts/bitcoin/ https://henvic.dev/posts/bitcoin/

paulpauper 5y ago

Musk would make a good politician. He mastered the art of the flip flop. This is why taking financial advice from twitter is generally a bad idea.

Barrin92 5y ago
also taking crypto gambling advice from one of the worlds richest people when you have 10k in the bank might not be a good idea either
lolthishuman 5y ago
What’s the flip flop? The reasoning is sound and it’s technically based on new data and key decisions.
newacct583 5y ago
Is it a flip flop or did he just... change his mind? I mean, the guy has a long history of tweet-first-think-later. It seems not unreasonable to me that he got suddenly and violently into cryptocoins, did the same thing people here do every week when they learn about it for the first time, and then (being a billionaire) had trusted folks come to him to carefully explain all the externalities and his generally-strong-if-highly-distractable analytical mind made a different decision with better evidence. I mean... I'm not saying Tesla's weird daliance with and then rejection of Bitcoin is particularly rational. I'm just saying it doesn't seem insincere.
- dalbasal 5y ago
  Flip flopping is changing your mind, or your decision once its on record. The fact that we're calling it flip flopping just means that we're thinking of Musk in the same terms we think of a politician.
- learnstats2 5y ago
  The concept that one person impulsively changed their mind is not correct. The board of Tesla will have agreed the plans.
5y ago

throwaway4good 5y ago

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?

paulpauper 5y ago
cuz of the character limit . elon and tesla bypass the usual PR firms and just post to twitter
- throwaway4good 5y ago
  This is short enough for a multi tweet tweet which would be the natural thing if it was actually Elon who wrote it. He doesn’t strike me as the sort of the guy who would put his statement inside an image and I would expect him to understand enough about Bitcoin to know that there is no way to guarantee it being mined “sustainably”.
  - eli 5y ago
    You think maybe greenpeace had him locked in a room?
    - throwaway4good 5y ago
      No. Some one else wrote that statement he posted ... and it was carefully vetted with pr and legal.
- throwaway4good 5y ago
  Pretty sure this one has been through both PR and legal.
prostoalex 5y ago
Isn't mining highly concentrated?
CTDOCodebases 5y ago

Ericson2314 5y ago

Hah! Many layers of hypocrisy here, heh, but at least this is a better place to end p. I hope this triggers a sell off.

adamhearn 5y ago
Why do you hope for a sell off?
- SilverRed 5y ago
  It lowers the price of bitcoin and the price ties pretty closely with the number of miners.
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  Because Bitcoin is stupid and bad.

paulpauper 5y ago

BTC still dropping even 30 minutes after news. so much for that EMH assumption of all public info being digested by market instantly

valine 5y ago
Finally, I've been waiting for the crypto bust. GPUs have been out of stock since last November.
- prox 5y ago
  Time for Crypto to go away for a while as it reinvents itself. In it’s current iteration it’s speculative, the only source from which its derives its value, which is shakey at best, and solves absolutely nothing atm.
ArkanExplorer 5y ago
It Tesla believes that Bitcoin is environmentally unfriendly, the logical thing to do is to sell all of its coins, as a lower price will lead to a lower level of mining intensity.

bitcoinmonger 5y ago

Has anyone considered the environmental impact of electric vehicles? The electricity is generated in the most part by fossil fuels, so how are they in any way a green alternative?

rawtxapp 5y ago

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 that much money without proper research which looks pretty bad for Tesla in my opinion.

paulpauper 5y ago
Yeah, I think that is just the excuse, not the actual reason. How could he not know about this already?
lolthishuman 5y ago
There’s more than those two you know…
SomewhatLikely 5y ago
Is it possible the bitcoin position was a hedge against chip prices? One would expect the two prices to be correlated. Price of bitcoin goes up -> more miners buy chips. I don't know, their bitcoin position otherwise doesn't make sense to me.
drexlspivey 5y ago
Most likely they changed course due to media/public backlash criticizing them for BTCs energy usage.
- quickthrower2 5y ago
  I think market manipulation is most likely.

shiado 5y ago

Looks like my knife catch orders might get triggered tonight lmao thanks Elon.

agumonkey 5y ago
happy juggling
- shiado 5y ago
  I stopped my bots and removed all orders. This is quite a special day on the crypto markets, perhaps the most interesting since last year.

Geee 5y ago

I hope he realizes that there aren't any cryptocurrencies that don't use energy & are properly decentralized.

intotheabyss 5y ago
Except of course for the number 2 crypto by mcap which is months away from proof of stake.
- cmckn 5y ago
  > months away This is optimistic, to say the least. I think ETH2 is a great idea, and is headed in a great direction; but if you take a look at any of the client implementations (Prysm being the most popular), it's not exactly rock-solid software that I would stake $135,000 on. Not to mention that many of the proposed benefits of ETH2 are not in Phase 0. I mean hell, you can't even withdraw your validator's balance yet.
- BTCOG 5y ago
  Coming Soon! (For 5 years!)
- Geee 5y ago
  I said "properly decentralized". Proof-of-stake isn't strong enough.
- joshschreuder 5y ago
  A more skeptical person would say it’s been months away from proof of stake for years now… I’m not bearish on this in particular but let’s wait for the thing to actually happen before celebrating it as a win I reckon.
encryptluks2 5y ago
Algorand from what I can tell... but the tooling to run nodes will hopefully improve

ObserverNeutral 5y ago

This guy is the most impulsive human, maybe ever. He'd sell his Futurama mom for a quick stock pump.

gregoriol 5y ago

So after his statement on Dogecoin on SNL a few days ago, Muskito is now officially into manupilating crypto prices?

Ekaros 5y ago
Yeah, he got the experience on stock market already. So why not move to next target as penalties are laughable...

deleted 5y ago

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Andys 5y ago

Strong suspicion Elon is buying more BTC now that the price is dropping.

hristov 5y ago

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. 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. 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.

hellbannedguy 5y ago
Or, did someone higher up leak information to Musk on upcoming regulation? I guess we might know if Musk sells his coins. (And no--I have no evidence. I just know wealthy boys get information. Even the people who didn't like Musk did 180's after his ingratiating performance Saturday Night Live. For the record, I have always liked Musk.)
rawtxapp 5y ago
That doesn't make sense, they are still holding a very large amount of it, why would they put this out and decrease the value of their own holdings?
- throwaway6734 5y ago
  Isn't it possible they're dumping the rest of their holdings?
  - Applejinx 5y ago
    That or they are certain they will get burned sooner or later, and therefore even if they tank the value of their holdings it's at a time of their choosing and with an amount that's predictable. Contrast with the scenario where they keep doing it, steadily increasing their bitcoin holdings and even seeing the proportion of sales using bitcoin increase… and THEN hit a wall, not of their own choosing, and see the value collapse. Even if they are not dumping their holdings at all, there's still a case to be made for pulling a plug at a time they control, over an amount they control. If it collapses, they can put a hard limit on how much they lose: that being, the previous value of their entire bitcoin holdings.

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aazaa 5y ago

> Tesla has suspended vehicle purchases using Bitcoin. The real reason is likely to be that few, if any, cars were bought with bitcoin. 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. 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. > ... we intend to use it when mining transitions to more sustainable energy. Makes no sense. Numerous articles document Bitcoin's energy sources, which are often hydroelectric due to its low cost. 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. All of this reveals a surprising lack of sophistication in the approach taken by both Tesla and Musk.

bun_at_work 5y ago
> All of this reveals a surprising lack of sophistication in the approach taken by both Tesla and Musk. Unless it was a pump and dump scheme. Granted, he says they won't be selling it until later, but they can just say they've decided it'll never be viable later, then sell it. This tracks with your statement that mining transactions using more sustainable energy doesn't make sense. Since crypto isn't regulated by the SEC, it seems like leveraging Tesla for a pump and dumb to generate capital is _not illegal_.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  Crypto that is considered securities (by meeting the Howey test) is regulated by the SEC. Crypto that is treated as a commodity is regulated by the CFTC.
  - kristianp 5y ago
    As far as I know all crypto is considered securities by the IRS.

wzy 5y ago

This guy really had John Q. Public thinking he is one of them

varsketiz 5y ago

Why the change happens now? My speculation is internal pressure from employees who don't want to accept the externalities.

jensvdh 5y ago

Great, let's bring Bitcoin down to ~$200 or whatever it's actual value is.

frankbreetz 5y ago

A funny thing for Elon Musk to do would be: Tesla Inc. buys some Bitcoin. Tesla announces that Bitcoin is good now and that it bought some. 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. Tesla sells some Bitcoin, making a profit. Musk tweets that the price of Bitcoin is too high. Bitcoin prices go down due to the Elon Markets Hypothesis. Go to Step 1. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-02-22/electric-bills-are-a-gamble-too?sref=1kJVNqnU https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-02-22/electr...

agumonkey 5y ago
There's also a few potential compounding layers in this. - big corp buys btc, makes btc legit, raises confidence and price - new cryptomillionaire find new friend in musk, and consider tesla the car brand of crypto, spend their money on tesla, including bitcoin, so tesla bitcoin wallet grows, while the company value grows while the asset grows.. it's all shower thought but I found it a fun business trick
londons_explore 5y ago
Would such a strategy be illegal?
- ivalm 5y ago
  Only if it is provable that the intent was to trick other people into buying Bitcoin so you can sell it (pump and dump). For something big like Bitcoin it would be hard to prove. For penny stocks it happens and does get prosecuted.
- iaw 5y ago
  In most asset classes: yes. In crypto: nope.
- sarsway 5y ago
  Welcome to the wild west of Crypto. People have been doing this or similar schemes since 2010. But I don't think that was Elon's intention. He has pretty good point after all. Bitcoin just produced too much unnecessary CO2, so it's simply not gonna work as a money replacement. I think more people start to realize this, but are still a bit reluctant to sell their BTC.

Arcuru 5y ago

If TSLA has already dumped their Bitcoin, Elon just pulled off a highly lucrative pump and dump scheme. 1. Buy $1.5 billion in BTC 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. 3. Sell off your BTC at the higher price. A portion was sold in Q1 for a hefty profit already. 4. Rinse and repeat with DOGE? The environmental impact was well known before they bought it, so it's a little odd that they'd reverse course because of that.

londons_explore 5y ago
> The environmental impact was well known before they bought it, so it's a little odd that they'd reverse course because of that. I wonder if the original decision to accept bitcoin was a quick decision by the CEO, but now the rest of the company and the shareholders have persuaded them it isn't a public relations risk they should be taking. Imagine the headline - "Every Tesla EV bought with bitcoin gives off more CO2 than a gas car!"
- qayxc 5y ago
  Or - and this might sound a little tin foil-hat - this was a strategic move to send the price of Bitcoin down, so they can buy the 10% they sold in Q1 back at lower price. Crypto is an unregulated market with ridiculously high volatility and announcements or big buy-ins are a relatively safe method of controlling the price (to a degree). It's a win-win in the eyes of the management - great PR ("see - they DO care") and dropping crypto prices...
  - drited 5y ago
    While a popular opinion, that does sound more tin foil hat to me than the alternative that he updated his knowledge in the last few months and/or had his opinion on Bitcoin changed by communication from others in the organisation. Tesla is a 568 billion market cap company. The profit it made on Bitcoin doesn't move the needle enough to justify some elaborate scheme to pump and dump. Musk is no stranger to whimsical decisions that, while involving a large amount of money in absolute terms, are not material in the context of the much larger value of his shares in Tesla.

mensetmanusman 5y ago

It would be funny if right after the initial announcement, Satoshi comes out of retirement to buy a ten million Teslas out of BTC. What would have happened…

xwolfi 5y ago
*to sell a million BTC to clear his conscience

Havoc 5y ago

He’ll do Eth next. Or well when it hits PoS I guess

ineedasername 5y ago

For anyone that has had their bitcoins for a little while, cashing them out to buy a car will incur a hefty capitol gains tax to do so.

baby 5y ago
Does it though? If you actually use bitcoin like a currency to purchase goods then I doubt these laws would work the same.
- Thrymr 5y ago
  Oh yes it does, according to the IRS: > Q16. Will I recognize a gain or loss if I exchange my virtual currency for other property? > A16. Yes. If you exchange virtual currency held as a capital asset for other property, including for goods or for another virtual currency, you will recognize a capital gain or loss. For more information on capital gains and capital losses, see Publication 544, Sales and Other Dispositions of Assets. Source: https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/frequently-asked-questions-on-virtual-currency-transactions https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/freq...
  - chki 5y ago
    Which makes sense, right? Otherwise I'll declare my stock and property to be currency and directly exchange it at the dealership for a new car, avoiding the capital gain tax.
- ineedasername 5y ago
  Yep, same thing as investing in a foreign currency that increases relative to the USD. When you convert it into a purchase you are realizing a gain, which is taxed. Heck, even savings account interest is taxable.
seabass 5y ago
In this case you're not "cashing" them out, though. You are directly purchasing goods. Does that sort of thing still incur capital gains tax in the US?

baby 5y ago

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. Now I’ll take bets on what cryptocurrency they’ll settle on next. Will it be algorand? Avalanche? Celo? The choice will be hard.

encryptluks2 5y ago
Algorand seems the most promising in my opinion.
- space_rock 5y ago
  Pump that token $$$!

NicoJuicy 5y ago

This is so 2017 and a lot of people just don't want to realize it, because of personal gain. Reminder: in 2017 woocommerce, square, steam, ... Started to add crypto currency as payment method and then removed it again.

young_unixer 5y ago

Hopefully people start to focus on cryptocurrencies with good fundamentals and actual use cases instead of tradition and dog memes. 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. 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.

jcaldas 5y ago

There is a far more eco-friendly alternative to proof-of-work (PoW) called proof-of-stake (PoS). 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. 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.

anonporridge 5y ago
Vanishingly unlikely. PoS would effectively destroy bitcoin's immutability, which is a huge part of the value proposition. And more importantly, a huge part of it's core principles. Coins like Ethereum that have already proven that immutability isn't a core principle (DAO fork) are fine moving to PoS. Most coins don't need their own PoW though. It's likely that we'll end up with one PoW chain and everyone else can periodically checkpoint themselves into bitcoin's immutable blockchain.
- trompetenaccoun 5y ago
  Ethereum was running on PoW when that happened. If anything you've just made an argument against PoW and miner centralization, where they can just get together and roll back the chain. The same would be possible in Bitcoin and while it hasn't happened yet there, we've had instances of large mining pools trying to censor transactions. A PoS system with sufficient decentralization would actually be more resilient against both these threats than a PoW one where mining is done by ASICs, which means large mining centers as opposed to individuals running an Ethereum node from their homes.
  - anonporridge 5y ago
    This is a reasonable criticism. Let me try to counter. PoW doesn't protect you from a large enough cabal of power (in Eth's case, developers and whale bag holders) controlling the direction of the chain, or censoring entities they don't like from continuing to contribute. What it does do is ensure that this large cabal can't erase history that happened. The only reason Ethereum was able to fork was because it was still young, they moved very fast, and there was enough external incentive from all parties to ignore the lost mining costs. And even with all that, Ethereum Classic still exists with all the PoW post DAO hack preserved. On the other hand, PoS has no cost associated with writing the blockchain as far back as you want. If a majority cabal of stakers agree to rewrite history, they just do it. They can rewrite the chain from the dawn of proof of stake with whatever changes they want and it looks equally valid as the "true chain". No energy intensive hashes needed. With PoS, you have to compromise a large enough number of stakers to mutate the chain. Very little cost after that. With PoW, you not only have to compromise the miners, but you need to force them to burn tons of real world energy to catch up to the current block to rewrite the chain. Insanely expensive and effectively impossible the farther back in time you go.

chris_wot 5y ago

Why would you purchase anything when it holds such value that eventually just increases? ;-)

Glench 5y ago

https://chiapower.org/ https://chiapower.org/

randomhodler84 5y ago
Chia is a great project, but proof of space and time is just another expression of proof of work. In this case the work is to procure disks, which are made from stuff, toxic stuff. I don’t think an environmental argument for chia works, no solar/wind farm can magic up Silicon for SSDs.
- Glench 5y ago
  SSDs aren't required for Chia, they're just faster for plotting which is a one-time process anyway. Once plots are made they can be "farmed" (mined) indefinitely for the energy cost of idling drives. So the environmental cost is an up-front capital cost instead of an ongoing power cost which in my opinion is a lot better. And this is not to forget that the storage market is already huge anyway and that "procuring drives" can be used for storage other than Chia, whereas the energy wasted by ASIC Bitcoin miners is just a complete waste.
  - randomhodler84 5y ago
    Wouldn’t be reusing those disks for anything that mattered. It’s “waste by proof of buying drives for mining.” Nothing wrong with that! Proof of work is all that matters. But it’s the same thing, it’s not actually a waste at all and it is equivalent to bitcoin. Spending energy is how we make coins trustlessly. It’s a Good thing.

seaourfreed 5y ago

Time for BTC to grow up. Grow up to PoS. And get transaction fees from $32 USD/each to < $1.00 USD each

rawtxapp 5y ago
Transaction fees on Bitcoin are ~2-4sat/byte (around ~1$ for most common transactions), I've been able to consolidate a lot of change outputs. Ether fees on the other hand are through the roof because of all the meme coins, it's been averaging ~200-300 gwei lately, even hitting 500+gwei today!

felixbraun 5y ago

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?

shruubi 5y ago

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. 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).

broighbrobroigh 5y ago
He's a child who wants attention, and seeing that Vitalik got some today by trashing Shibua means he's going to try and pump Shibua next.
erentz 5y ago
> 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 mean his tweet right before this announcement was a poll asking just that, if Tesla should accept Dogecoin. So yeah. The guy is a clown. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1392030108274159619 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1392030108274159619
perl4ever 5y ago
It seems like Ethereum is what's going up at the moment. No idea why.
- quickthrower2 5y ago
  Might be demand for shittokens. You need ETH for the transaction fees.
- broighbrobroigh 5y ago
  >> No idea why. Mainstream adoption, Visa & Goldman Sachs using it as a settlement layer, actual utility, defi, etc...
  - 5y ago

lettergram 5y ago

Pretty sure he saw this now deleted thread on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/nb1rki/cryptocurrency_energy_usage_per_transaction/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/nb1rki/cryptocurr... From ElegantPoop: > Well, it would appear by this image we have ourselves a sub 1% of bitcoin per transaction. Winning.

delecti 5y ago
The image on that post has been deleted, and I don't really understand ElegantPoop's comment. Can you explain why the original thread would have been relevant to the Tesla situation?

blondie9x 5y ago

@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.

ak_111 5y ago

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?

throwaway4good 5y ago

And Bitcoin is under 50K. Thank you, Elon, for saving the environment with just a single tweet.

mrb 5y ago

Tesla contributes to misinformation. 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. 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.

MauranKilom 5y ago
> same amount of energy, regardless if there are 1 or 1000 transactions in the block. Last I heard, there was a physical limit to the number of transactions in a block (and no intent of increasing that number). > this metric can go down by actually increasing the number of transactions, ie. continuing to accept Bitcoin as payments. Are you implying that there are too few transactions to fill blocks right now, so Tesla accepting bitcoin will make blocks fuller? You also seem to be fully ignoring that the main energy spend is in the mining, not the validation. More transactions (with fixed # of tx/10 min) = higher fees = more mining competition = more energy expenditure.
- mrb 5y ago
  «Last I heard, there was a physical limit to the number of transactions in a block (and no intent of increasing that number).» There is no limit when transactions happen in L2 (or off-chain) «You also seem to be fully ignoring that the main energy spend is in the mining, not the validation» Mining and validation are one and the same. A block simultaneously mines new coin and validates existing transactions.
  - stale2002 5y ago
    > There is no limit when transactions happen in L2 Basically nobody uses L2 transactions. The amount of actual money that goes through 2nd layer solutions, is very small compared to on chain transactions.

rkagerer 5y ago

This is simple. The PR blowback was more intense than expected and they're trying to salvage their brand values.

paulpauper 5y ago

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.

yks 5y ago
Which is all fine and good until "get rich quick" are forced into your index funds.

paulpauper 5y ago

mstr down 10% ah hmmm back of envelope math shows potential default if btc falls below 10k. https://greyenlightenment.com/2021/03/16/microstrategys-bad-strategy/ https://greyenlightenment.com/2021/03/16/microstrategys-bad-... I hope Mr Saylor saved some $ for the inevitable lawsuits. Very reckless on their part.

kordlessagain 5y ago

Musk is a showman who has vision, but no lasting power.

whoisterencelee 5y ago

These here might want to check out Gridcoin https://gridcoin.us https://gridcoin.us: ... 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 - https://en.bitcoinwiki.org/wiki/GridCoin https://en.bitcoinwiki.org/wiki/GridCoin ... 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 - https://gridcoin.us/wiki/ https://gridcoin.us/wiki/ ... do not require huge amounts of energy consumption to be mined. This makes PoS coins such as Gridcoin a more eco-friendly alternative .. - https://coincentral.com/what-is-gridcoin/ https://coincentral.com/what-is-gridcoin/ Altcoins like SolarCoin and GridCoin are better for the environment - https://medium.com/@johnniec/altcoins-like-solarcoin-and-gridcoin-are-better-for-the-environment-730967a367a7 https://medium.com/@johnniec/altcoins-like-solarcoin-and-gri... What if we could mine cryptocurrency using meaningful calculations with additional real-world benefits?- https://medium.com/adventures-in-volunteer-computing/cryptocurrencies-that-benefit-scientific-research-and-the-environment-f18a840336fb https://medium.com/adventures-in-volunteer-computing/cryptoc... 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. - https://coinswitch.co/info/gridcoin/what-is-gridcoin https://coinswitch.co/info/gridcoin/what-is-gridcoin One of the main advantages of Gridcoin is that crunching (“mining”) does useful scientific research - https://gridcoin.us/wiki/advantages-and-features https://gridcoin.us/wiki/advantages-and-features 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 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gridcoin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gridcoin The project can be found at https://gridcoin.us https://gridcoin.us 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

toralero 5y ago

BenoitEssiambre 5y ago

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 ( https://benoitessiambre.com/specter.html https://benoitessiambre.com/specter.html ). I'm hoping the lines about not selling and looking at other cryptocurrency options are empty statements to save face.

chki 5y ago

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.

paulpauper 5y ago

People mad on twitter at elon. Welcome to the world of finance. Ruthless and unpredictable.

godelski 5y ago

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 just learned about the environmental impacts of POW, because no one has been talking about that for the last 5 years. No one.

randomhodler84 5y ago

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. BTFD

DanielleMolloy 5y ago

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.

redisman 5y ago
Tesla coin? It’s not that hard to fork a GitHub repo and do a search and replace

dehrmann 5y ago

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. 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 that bad compared to making a car.

DonHopkins 5y ago

Tesla should just cut out the middleman and make coal powered cars.

quickthrower2 5y ago
They’d need to burn silicon too’
- DonHopkins 5y ago
  But burning silicon is even more dangerous than burning coal! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon-burning_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon-burning_process >When a star has completed the silicon-burning phase, no further fusion is possible. The star catastrophically collapses and may explode in what is known as a Type II supernova. >The central portion of the star is now crushed into either a neutron star or, if the star is massive enough, a black hole. The outer layers of the star are blown off in an explosion known as a Type II supernova that lasts days to months.

deleted 5y ago

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stubish 5y ago

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.

quickthrower2 5y ago
More likely they’ll allow it but the seller has to report the info to the tax agency, who automatically sends the bill to the citizen.

g42gregory 5y ago

Maybe I am a bit too cynical, but I wonder if Elon Musk is looking to buy more Bitcoin and decided to depress the price? Would this even be legal?

gkfasdfasdf 5y ago

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.

georgeplusplus 5y ago

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.

templarchamp 5y ago

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....

tim333 5y ago

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.

antpls 5y ago

The reactions on Twitter are crazy, the Bitcoin fanatics who never cared about other cryptocurrencies are loudy. 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!

prepend 5y ago

It’s funny that he says “suspend.” Was there some marketing collective unconscious that uses suspend instead of just “stop?” It’s ok to stop things and then start them later. This reminds me of twitters “permanent suspension” instead of saying “banned” or “blocked” or “removed.” 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.

mumblemumble 5y ago
Suspend is an absolutely bog standard term to use in this context. Perhaps even preferable to "stop", for vague reasons having to do with this tweet being something the SEC is probably paying close attention to.