'Indeed': Elon Musk's tweet makes Bitcoin tumble further after U-turn on Tesla payments

Tech billionaire and cryptocurrency aficionado Elon Musk has once again fluctuated the value of Bitcoin by making a tweet about it. It all started when a user wrote "Bitcoiners are going to slap themselves next quarter when they find out Tesla dumped the rest of their #Bitcoin holdings". His tweet came days after Musk announced that his electric car making firm would not accept Bitcoin as payment, citing excessive use of fossil fuel used in its mining. The user further wrote that with the amount of hate that Musk was getting, he would not blame the billionaire further for plummeting price of bitcoin. Instead of defending himself, Musk simply replied "Indeed", thereby sending the price of bitcoin further down. 

Bitcoin value plummets 

Late last week, the Tesla chief took to the microblogging site to announce that his electric car company would no longer accept payments in Bitcoin citing excessive use of fossil fuels for its mining. The tweet led to an immediate plunge in the value of the cryptocurrency, which has continued since then. On Sunday, May 16, the price of Bitcoin traded below $45,000. The downward trajectory followed on Monday as Bitcoin traded for $42,702 at its lowest in the evening, according to data by the coin desk. On Tuesday, it picked up an upward trajectory and is trading at $45,354.09 at the time of writing this article.

Repercussions on crypto market

It's imperative to understand that the price of Bitcoin drives the whole crypto market. When Bitcoin falls significantly, it causes panic selling among crypto investors as they sell their Altcoins. Elon Musk didn't stop there, he continued to attack Bitcoin, calling it 'centralised' in another one of his tweets. As the negative tweets from Elon continued, the Bitcoin kept crashing. 

At the time of writing this article, the Bitcoin price stands at $45,191, almost a 28 per cent drop from the April peak price of $64,000. Ethereum is down by $500 from a peak price of more than $4000 to $3,500. Dogecoin is down from its peak price of $0.71 cents to hovering around $0.51 cents. Other major coins have also seen a significant fall in their prices.

Meanwhile, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey hailed the cryptocurrency Bitcoin as he said that the token “changes everything for the better.” The Twitter boss added that he would "forever" work to improve the cryptocurrency, adding that “no single person or institution will be able to change it [cryptocurrency] or stop it.

Image: AP