Elon Musk, founder and chief engineer of SpaceX speaks at the 2020 Satellite Conference and Exhibition March 9, 2020 in Washington, DC.
Win McNamee | Getty Images
Bitcoin’s price surged after Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Sunday the electric vehicle maker could accept bitcoin transactions again in future.
Bitcoin jumped to $39,095, up 9% in the last 24 hours and up from the $34,880 level at the start of Sunday trading, according to Coinbase. Since the start of the year, bitcoin has surged more than 30%, though it has experienced wild swings. It hit an all-time high of $64,829.14 in April and hit a low near $30,000 in May following a 30% intraday crash.
The weekend gains came after Musk said Sunday that Tesla will resume allowing bitcoin transactions “when there’s confirmation of reasonable (~50%) clean energy usage by miners with positive future trend.”
Teslas halted car purchases with bitcoin in mid-May, citing concerns over the climate impact of cryptocurrency mining.
Crypto mining requires massive amounts of energy to fuel powerful computers — bitcoin mining consumes more energy than entire countries such as Finland and Belgium, according to the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index.
