The price of Bitcoin has declined after Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, announced on Twitter the decision by Tesla to suspend the use of Bitcoin as a payment option for its products. The tweet made on Thursday May 13, says the reason Tesla won’t be accepting cryptocurrency as means of payment is blamed on the negative impact of “rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal.”

However, the statement by Tesla attempted to relax speculations by mentioning that it would not be letting go of its stake in Bitcoin and are intending to use it for transactions as soon as the mining of it transitions to methods at a lesser negative impact to the environment. The statement also went further to reveal that the company is searching for viable cryptocurrencies that use “

< 1% of Bitcoin’s energy/transaction. The crypto community has been sent into wild hysteria as the price of Bitcoin crashed to shed over 15% in value in less than 3 hours the Tesla boss made the tweet. Bitcoin plummeted from a towering value of $55,000 to $46,000 within the three-hour time frame.

The tweet announcing the suspension had generated over 95,000 comments and 102,000 re-tweets spurring heavy backlash from critics who have targeted Musks’ casual attitude as his words often incur heavy effects on the crypto market.

The Fear and Greed Index rating of the most valuable digital asset has swung from a 68 greed score as of yesterday to a 31 fear rating today. The decision earlier made by Tesla to begin accepting Bitcoin as a means of payment for its automobiles in the last quarter of March was highly welcomed as the declaration marked an important turn for speculations about the crypto.

The decision from the automobile manufacturing company has left Bitcoin investors devastated whilst accusing Musk of playing a “pump and dump” game on the currency. However, some optimistic investors have gone well ahead to stake on the digital asset by buying the dip and creating a resistance stand for the coin.

How CEO Elon Musk is Influencing Cryptocurrency

CEO Elon Musk has recently proven to exert visible influence in the entire cryptocurrency market. The cryptocurrency market which is otherwise based on emotions and general speculations to thrive is believed to be manipulated by Musk through his sentimental tweets.

Barstool Sports founder, Dave Portnoy has asserted in a statement that the Telsa boss was attempting to tank BTC. “[Musk] has been pulling the levers like the Wizard of Oz on crypto, and everyone’s following his every move…”, Dave stated at a press conference.

Evidence of the allegation was cited for Dogecoin as the meme token pumped up significantly after Elon Musk asked followers in a survey if they would support the acceptance of Dogecoin as a payment alternative. Twitter commentators have gone further to suggest the cryptocurrencies that would become the next alternative for Tesla mentioning Ripple, ETH, Steller, and DOGE.