Bitcoin clean energy usage reportedly exceeds 50% — Will Tesla start accepting BTC payments?

Elon Musk said in 2021 that Tes­la would accept Bit­coin pay­ments once min­ers were using rough­ly 50% clean ener­gy sources “with pos­i­tive future trend” — a bench­mark that may have recent­ly been met.

In a Sept. 14 thread on X (for­mer­ly Twit­ter), Bloomberg ana­lyst Jamie Coutts report­ed the per­cent­age of Bit­coin (BTC) min­ing ener­gy com­ing from renew­able sources had exceed­ed 50% with “falling emis­sions plus a dra­mat­i­cal­ly ris­ing hash rate.” Accord­ing to Coutts, the push toward renew­able ener­gy sources was the result of min­ers dis­pers­ing from Chi­na in the wake of the country’s min­ing ban start­ing in 2021, as well as cer­tain nations turn­ing to min­ing to “mon­e­tize strand­ed and excess energy.”

Sus­tain­able Ener­gy Sources Rise >50%
Falling emis­sions plus a dra­mat­i­cal­ly ris­ing hash rate can only mean one thing; Bit­coin min­ing is con­sum­ing more sus­tain­able ener­gy in its mix. pic.twitter.com/AGXrKWDWuI

— Jamie Coutts CMT (@Jamie1Coutts) Sep­tem­ber 14, 2023

Coun­tries invest­ing in BTC min­ing include El Sal­vador — which has also rec­og­nized the cryp­tocur­ren­cy as legal ten­der since 2021 — Bhutan, Oman and the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates. The 50% ener­gy bench­mark could mean a greater move toward adop­tion by one of the biggest com­pa­nies in the world. 

Relat­ed: Tesla’s dia­mond hands: EV mak­er’s Bit­coin hold­ings see no change in Q2

Musk — the CEO of Tes­la, own­er of X and founder of SpaceX — announced Tes­la would stop accept­ing BTC pay­ments in May 2021, cit­ing the “rapid­ly increas­ing use of fos­sil fuels for Bit­coin min­ing and trans­ac­tions” at the time. Since estab­lish­ing a sus­tain­able ener­gy source thresh­old of 50% for when the firm would resume pay­ments, Musk acknowl­edged that there was a pos­i­tive trend toward green ener­gy sources but hasn’t changed Tesla’s policy.

The Tes­la CEO did not appear to have pub­licly announced any move to resume BTC pay­ments. At the time of pub­li­ca­tion, the price of Bit­coin was $26,572, hav­ing risen more than 2% in the last sev­en days.

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