Electric-car maker Tesla will “most likely” resume accepting Bitcoin as payments after it conducts due diligence on the amount of renewable energy used to mine the currency, Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said at a conference.
Musk's comments at the B Word conference come after Tesla said in May it would stop accepting bitcoin for car purchases, less than two months after the company began accepting the world's biggest digital currency for payment.
"I wanted a little bit more due diligence to confirm that the percentage of renewable energy usage is most likely at or above 50 percent, and that there is a trend towards increasing that number, and if so Tesla would resume accepting bitcoin" Musk said.
"Tesla's mission is accelerating the advent of sustainable energy. We can't be the company that does that and also not do appropriate diligence on the energy usage of bitcoin," he added.
After the conference, Bitcoin was up 8 percent at $32,160.16, while ether surged 11.6 percent to $1,993.36. Tesla's shares were down 0.8 percent at $655.30 in extended trading.
Musk added that he personally owned bitcoin, ethereum and dogecoin, apart from bitcoin that Tesla and SpaceX owned.
"I might pump, but I don't dump," Musk said. "I definitely do not believe in getting the price high and selling ... I would like to see bitcoin succeed."
[Inputs from Reuters]
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