Bitcoin rebounded to about $50,000 in Asian trading on Thursday after plunging as much as 17% after Elon Musk tweeted Tesla Inc had stopped accepting bitcoin to purchase its vehicles
By Kevin Buckland and Alun John
TOKYO/HONG KONG (Reuters) - Bitcoin rebounded to about $50,000 in Asian trading on Thursday after plunging as much as 17% after Elon Musk tweeted Tesla Inc had stopped accepting bitcoin to purchase its vehicles due to climate concerns.
The price of the world's largest cryptocurrency dropped from around $54,819 to $45,700, its lowest since March 1, in just under two hours following the tweet shortly after 2200 GMT. It recovered about half of that drop early in the Asian session, and last traded about $50,196.
Ether, the world's second-largest cryptocurrency, followed a similar pattern, also dropping 14% to touch a low of $3,550, before bouncing back to about $3,965.
"We are concerned about rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal, which has the worst emissions of any fuel," Musk wrote.
Tesla's announcements earlier this year that it had bought $1.5 billion of bitcoin and that it would accept it as payment for cars has been one factor behind the digital tokens' surging price this year.
As a result, Musk's comments roiled markets even though he said Tesla would not sell any bitcoin and would resume accepting bitcoin as soon as mining transitioned to more sustainable energy.
"The issue (of huge energy use by bitcoin miners) has been long known so it's nothing new. But taken together with Musk's recent comments about dogecoin, his latest comments seems to suggest his passion for cryptocurrencies may be waning," said Makoto Sakuma, a researcher at NLI Research Institute in Tokyo.
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