Crypto market in sharp fall as Tesla suspends bitcoin

The suspension of bitcoin payment option by electric vehicle manufacturer, Tesla, has caused a drastic fall in the cryptocurrency market.
Chief Executive Officer of Tesla, Elon Musk, on Wednesday announced that the electric automaker had suspended bitcoin payment option.
Tesla had introduced the bitcoin payment option in March for the company’s products, a month after it announced that it had invested $1.5bn in bitcoin.
The prices of Bitcoin dropped more than 11 per cent to $50,883.95 on Thursday, according to a new report on cryptocurrency by TheCable, adding that Etherum price declined by 12 per cent to $3,753 while Doge dropped by 17.06 per cent to $0.422653.
Musk tweeted, “Tesla has suspended vehicle purchases using Bitcoin. 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.
“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.
“Tesla will not be selling any Bitcoin and we intend to use it for transactions as soon as mining transitions to more sustainable energy. We are also looking at other cryptocurrencies that use <1% of Bitcoin’s energy/transaction.”

The Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index, a report by Harvard Business Review, said mining from Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Ethereum requires vast amount of energy consumption to function, posing a huge environmental threat to the Paris climate change agreement.
The Central Bank of Nigeria in February directed banks to close accounts of persons or entities involved in cryptocurrency transactions.