‘Don’t Buy Tesla’ Trends On Social Media As Elon Musk Faces Backlash For Suddenly Rejecting Bitcoin Payments On Tesla Purchases

Elon Musk is facing backlash over his decision to not allow consumers to purchase Tesla vehicles using Bitcoin over environmental concerns.

On Wednesday night, Musk denounced the “insane” amount of energy used to produce bitcoin in his recent decision to reject cryptocurrency as a means of payment.

“Cryptocurrency is a good idea on many levels and we believe it has a promising future, but this cannot come at great cost to the environment,” Musk tweeted on Wednesday.

Energy usage trend over past few months is insane https://t.co/E6o9s87trw pic.twitter.com/bmv9wotwKe

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 13, 2021

Musk’s tweet immediately sent Bitcoin prices crashing.

Via CNBC

At around 6 p.m. ET on Wednesday when Musk made the announcement, the value of the whole cryptocurrency market stood at around $2.43 trillion, according to data from Coinmarketcap.com. By 8:45 p.m., the market capitalization had dropped to around $2.06 trillion, wiping off around $365.85 billion.

The market has since pared some losses, and by around 8:30 a.m. the cryptocurrency market had seen around $180 billion wiped off its value since

Proponents of Bitcoin were unhappy with Musk’s decision and felt he was manipulating the market with his tweet. “Don’t buy Tesla” started trending on Twitter as many called for a boycott of Musk’s company.

https://twitter.com/josean9292/status/1392782963574820865

https://twitter.com/TnlGokhan/status/1392682977797316608