US electric vehicle maker Tesla has just announced that it will no longer accept Bitcoin payments. As reported by Elon Musk, the company's CEO, through his Twitter account, the decision has been taken due to the company's concerns about the impact Bitcoin has on the environment:
"We are concerned about the rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal, which has the worst emissions of any fuel."
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Tesla started accepting Bitcoins as a payment method in March shortly after revealing the company had invested $1.5 billion in the cryptocurrency. Tesla said:
"Cryptocurrency is good on many levels and we believe it has a promising future, but this cannot come at great cost to the environment. Tesla will not be selling any Bitcoin and we intend to use it for transactions as soon as mining transitions to more sustainable energy. We are also looking at other cryptocurrencies that use less thank 1% of Bitcoin's energy/transaction."
Just two weeks ago, Tesla CFO Zach Kirkhorn said during the presentation of the company's quarterly results the company "intends to continue to accumulate Bitcoins from the transactions of customers who pay for cars with Bitcoins."
Earlier this week, Musk polled Twitter users on whether the company should accept Dogecoin as a payment method.