Bitcoin took a 3.7% drop to near $45,100 Sunday afternoon EST after Tesla CEO Elon Musk did not outright deny that the electric car has sold or could soon sell all of its bitcoin (BTC, -13.06%) holdings after the criticism Elon Musk received after suspending the digital asset as a form of payment.
Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, is currently trading at $ 43, 262.48 a 10.88% drop as of 7.00 A.M East African Time.
Last week, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that Tesla would be suspending the option to pay for vehicles using BTC. In a tweet, Elon Musk said Tesla had suspended vehicle purchases using BTC out of concerns of rapid usage of fossil fuels in mining and transactions.
Elon Musk further stated Tesla would not be selling any BTC, and they intend to use it for transactions as soon as mining transitions to more sustainable energy. The electric car maker revealed they are looking at other cryptocurrencies that use <1% of Bitcoin’s energy/transaction.
However, recently, the electric car maker was unable to deny that they have sold or could sell their BTC after a tweet by Twitter handle @CryptoWhale, said that “Bitcoiners are going to slap themselves next quarter when they find out Tesla dumped the rest of their #Bitcoin holdings.”
In response to the tweet, Elon musk tweeted ” Indeed”, which was not a direct response to the claim.
Growing Support for Dogecoin Despite Bitcoin Performance
Dogecoin, the meme-inspired cryptocurrency, has been receiving a lot of support recently, with companies like Tesla and coinbase expressing interest in the digital token
Dogecoin is currently exchanging hands at $ 0.4831 as of 7.00 A.M East African Time, an 8.34% decline
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said during a Thursday earnings call that the cryptocurrency company is preparing to list Dogecoin on its platform.
During the call, Brian Armstrong said they plan to list DOGE in the next six to eight weeks, and then, more broadly, they will be focused on how they can accelerate asset addition in the future.
“There’s more and more assets being created in the crypto economy, I think it’s going to be something kind of like apps in the App Store on the iPhone, where there’s eventually millions of these assets created over time, and so we’re putting a lot of work and thought into how do we accelerate our pace of asset addition.” Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong
The electric car maker has also been expressing its growing interest in dogecoin, the meme-inspired token.
Last week, Elon Musk made his hosting debut Saturday Night Live” and devoted part of his opening monologue and one sketch to talking up dogecoin. He polled his nearly 54 million Twitter followers asking whether Tesla should accept Dogecoin as a payment option.
However, Instead of helping drive up the price of the meme-inspired token, dogecoin actually tanked 30% over the course of the hour that Musk was hosting SNL.
