Bitcoin Price Sees a Surge After Elon Musk's Conference on Cryptocurrency

Bitcoin has seen a significant dip in its value over the past few months due to two major market crashes. One of them was blamed on Tesla CEO Elon Musk as the electric vehicle-making company stopped accepting Bitcoin as payments over climate concerns, and the second was caused by a crackdown on Bitcoin mining in China. As the world's largest digital coin began its slump, a majority of investors panicked, some of whom dumped it. But there are initial signs that the cryptocurrency is bouncing back. Read on to find out how that happened.

What Contributed To The Surge?

In recent days, large Bitcoin whale accounts, that had remained dormant for years, suddenly woke up and made big transactions. For example, A group of whale accounts, that were inactive since December 2018, bought 28,377 Bitcoins worth $841.85 million (roughly Rs. 62,789 crores) on July 17 and July 18. This fuelled a sentiment of positivity in an otherwise dull market.

Another factor that caused a price surge was Musk's statement during a conference on Wednesday. He said he personally is invested in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Dogecoin. He also said that Tesla will "most likely" start accepting payments in Bitcoin after the digital coin increases the amount of renewable energy used in mining. Following the statement, Bitcoin price surged 8 percent to $32,160.16. In India, the price of Bitcoin was Rs. 23.8 lakhs as of 11 am Thursday (July 22), with a 4.09 percent appreciation in the past 24 hours.

Musk said he wants confirmation that the percentage of renewable energy usage is most likely at or above 50 percent and also that miners were trying to increase that number. "Most likely the answer is that Tesla would resume accepting Bitcoin," Musk said during the B Word video conference. Musk said he would like to see Bitcoin succeed.

The Crashes

Musk has been previously criticised for his confusing remarks about Bitcoin. First, he supported Bitcoin on public platforms, including on Twitter, and when environmentalists and climate activists slammed him for promoting a digital coin that was grossly energy-intensive, Musk, whose company had invested $1.5 billion (roughly Rs. 11,150 crores) in Bitcoin earlier this year, announced in May that Tesla was stopping accepting Bitcoin payments.

Musk maintained that he was not against any cryptocurrency but he said miners will have to improve their energy usage. While Bitcoin was recovering from this u-turn, China outlawed trading in cryptocurrencies in May and it has been cracking down on miners since then. This led to the second round of market crash in late May.

Bitcoin had hit an all-time high of nearly $65,000 (Rs. 47.3 lakh) in late April, when its dream run ended and the price began to tumble.