Tesla CEO Elon Musk has reversed course, saying the company will now accept cryptocurrency as payment, CNBC reported.
“When there’s confirmation of reasonable (about 50 percent) clean energy usage by miners with positive future trend, Tesla will resume allowing bitcoin transactions,” Musk tweeted.
In February, Tesla revealed through a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing that it had bought $1.5 billion in bitcoin, saying it planned to accept the digital coins as payment. However, in May, concerns over crypto mining and its effects on the environment, with contributions to climate change from fossil fuel emissions, caused Musk to pause crypto payments for Tesla vehicles.
In changing his mind, Musk was responding to comments from Magda Wierzycka, CEO of South African asset manager Sygnia, who accused him of market manipulation with his tweets and said he should be investigated by the SEC, CNBC reported.
In other news, the Central Bank of the Argentine Republic is looking into several FinTechs that have links to financial investments using crypto assets as channels for savings illegally, according to an announcement.
The investigation will cover nine companies that have been purported to collect deposits and convert them into cryptos, which are then applied to investment and consumer financing, and offer rewards, the announcement stated.
Once the investigation concludes, authorities will determine whether the companies have been performing financial intermediation without authorization, according to the announcement.
Meanwhile, Pieter Hasekamp, director of the Dutch Bureau for Economic Analysis under the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy, said the Netherlands should “ban bitcoin,” Cointelegraph reported.
He said the per the report that digital currency could cause problems because of its so-called lack of intrinsic value, which “is only valuable because others may accept it.”
Hasekamp’s argument is a routine one for anti-crypto speakers, arguing that crypto doesn’t meet the basic standards for money as a unit of account, means of payment and store of value. He said he is also concerned about security and fraud, according to the report.
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