Elon Musk speaks to bitcoin miners, sends crypto's price up 9%

Bitcoin’s price rose 9% to $38,767.62 early on Tuesday after Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he had spoken to miners about energy usage.

Almost all of the other major cryptocurrencies are also higher as a result with Ethereum’s price up over 15% in the last 24 hours to $2,634.79 and Dogecoin’s up 8% to 35 cents a coin.

Musk tweeted that he was having active discussions with bitcoin miners regarding the sustainability of the digital coin.

“Spoke with North American Bitcoin miners. They committed to publish current & planned renewable usage & to ask miners WW to do so. Potentially promising,” he wrote.

Microstrategy CEO Michael Saylor followed up on Musk’s tweet, saying he hosted a meeting between the Tesla CEO and some bitcoin miners that led to the formation of the Bitcoin Mining Council, which will promote sustainability.

The announcement comes after Musk said that Tesla would no longer be accepting payments in bitcoin due to the negative climate impact of its mining. Bitcoin mining requires powerful computers solving mathematical problems and vast amounts of energy are used.

Bitcoin has a carbon footprint comparable to that of New Zealand, producing 36.95 megatons of CO2 annually, according to Digiconomist.