Digital markets have had a tough time this past week, with a major drop in the price of almost every popular cryptocurrency. Bitcoin value fell by nearly 30%, while…
Netizens on Twitter reflected ironically to a decidedly bad week for crypto investors as the digital currency market has lost nearly $1.2 trillion in capitalization, according to Moneycontrol. The decline was said to have been triggered by a number of reports and events over recent days. Particularly, by an announcement by Tesla CEO Elon Musk on 13 May that his company would no longer accept bitcoin payments because of concerns « about rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal, which has the worst emissions of any fuel ». Musk’s comments led to a rapid drop in the price of Bitcoin – a trend that initially became observable following Musk’s participation in the SNL show in early May. During the show, seen by many as promising for the value of cryptocurrency, Dogecoin in particular, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO called cryptocurrency a « hustle », which led to a swift drop in the price of Dogecoin – a coin Musk has promoted in the recent past.
