Bitcoin jumped above $39,000 after Musk said Tesla might accept it again

Bitcoin jumped above $39,000 in the last 24 hours after Elon Musk said Sunday Tesla Inc could accept Bitcoin again in the future.

According to Coinbase, Bitcoin’s price surged to $39,095 (9% up) at the start of Sunday trading. Before, Tesla CEO Elon Musk clarified in response to a tweet of Cointelegraph, one of the biggest crypto publications, that the electric vehicle maker would start accepting the cryptocurrency for its cars again when there’s “a clear confirmation of reasonable (~50%) clean energy usage.”

It shows that the executive foresees a great future for Bitcoin adoption after the critics of the digital currency for waste energy usage and relying too much on fossil fuels.

Musk’s decision to halt Bitcoin payments had a huge impact on crypto prices a month ago.  In a few hours, BTC dropped from $57,300 to $49,003.

Musk has stirred up the cryptocurrency market over the past few months. In February, Tesla announced it had purchased $1.5 billion in Bitcoin and showed an intention to start accepting Bitcoin as payment for vehicles. Later in March, Musk tweeted, “you can now buy a Tesla with Bitcoin,” only to say in May, it was suspended concerning excessive energy usage of Bitcoin mining and transactions.

Magda Wierzycka, CEO of Sygnia, a financial services company, criticized Musk for “recent activity on social media” and the following “influence on crypto markets.”

“The Bitcoin volatility we have seen is an unexpected function of what I would call market manipulation by Elon Musk. If that happens to a listed company, he would be investigated and severely sanctioned by the SEC,” she said in an interview with the Money Show.

The opinion of Jonathan Cheesman, head of over-the-counter and institutional sales at crypto exchange FTX, is softer: “Elon’s stance seems to be moderating and providing a target that’s not far away. The rally was already underway as the market speculates about an imminent purchase from MicroStrategy and the G-7 comments on crypto were neutral, even optimistic, about digital innovation.”

MicroStrategy Inc., whose CEO Michael Saylor has widely known as a crypto-evangelist, last week raised a junk-bond offering to buy the cryptocurrency to $500 million from $400 million.

Fred Thiel, CEO of Marathon Digital Holdings Inc., commented on the threshold for clean-energy usage: “We may soon be closer to 50% than you think. There is already a big shift happening as China shuts down Bitcoin mining operations in provinces that were primarily powered by coal,” he said.

According to the Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance, 39% of crypto mining is powered by renewable (mainly hydroelectric) sources.

This year Bitcoin’s price has stepped up more than 30%, despite wild swings. It marked an absolute record of $64,829 in April and fallen below $30,000 in May after a 30% drop by the day.