The crypto market was volatile again on Thursday’s trading. Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency with the largest market capitalization value, fell by more than 17% to US $ 45,000 / BTC, before ending trading at US $ 49,305.39 / BTC, or falling 9.5%.
Ethereum also briefly plunged more than 13% before ending Thursday’s trading at US $ 3,716.8 / ETH, down 9.35%. Ethereum is the currency with the second largest market cap. Other cryptocurrencies have also had the same fate, ripple to Dogecoin have also fallen sharply. As a result, the crypto market capitalization immediately evaporated significantly.
Based on Coinmarketcap data, Thursday (13/05/2021), the cryptocurrency market capitalization reached US $ 2.43 trillion. However, at 7.45 WIB the value was only US $ 2.06 trillion. This means that in less than 3 hours, US $ 365.85 billion of money disappeared.
Elon Musk Stop Bitcoin as Tesla Payment
This happened after Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he stopped buying Tesla cars using bitcoin. Through his twitter account, Elon mentioned the reason for the suspension was due to the increase in fossil fuels which was increasing due to bitcoin mining activities.
Elon Musk said on Twitter this morning that he would stop using bitcoin in the purchase of Tesla cars. The reason is that bitcoin mining has triggered an increase in the use of fossil fuels which are not environmentally friendly.
“Tesla has suspended the purchase of vehicles using Bitcoin. We are concerned about the rapid increase in the use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal, which has the worst emissions of any fuel,” tweeted Elon Musk.
According to a Cambridge University study, electricity consumption for Bitcoin mining for a year is equivalent to the electricity consumption of Argentines in a year. Most of the power plants in the world still use fossil fuels such as oil and coal.
However, in the tweet, the founder of the SpaceX company also emphasized that cryptocurrency is a good and promising idea in the future, and Tesla will not sell its bitcoins. Tesla will also again accept payments with bitcoin when mining uses environmentally friendly energy.
In today’s trading, Friday (14/5/2021) morning, cryptocurrency prices began to improve. Bitcoin strengthened 1.8% compared to last Thursday’s position, back to the level of US $ 50,000 / BTC, ethereum also gained 1.78%, as well as other cryptocurrencies. Market capitalization also rose to US $ 2.23 trillion.
Read now: Crypto Lovers, Wanna Mining Bitcoin?