By Dhirendra Tripathi
Investing.com – Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) shares were up a little over 1% Monday as traders reacted positively to CEO Elon Musk’s tweet that the company would resume allowing Bitcoin (BitfinexUSD) transactions once “there’s confirmation of reasonable (~50%) clean energy usage by miners with positive future trend."
The shares shrugged off Canaccord (TSX:CF) lowering its target for the stock to $812 from $974. The share currently trades 24% below Canaccord’s target price.
Traders, crypto miners, speculators and supporters of digital currencies treat Musk as their unofficial spokesperson, looking out for his views on the cryptos and catching every word or meme he posts to decide their trades.
So when Musk on May 13 said Tesla would no longer be accepting bitcoin from buyers of Tesla vehicles because of their high energy consumption, many questioned the crypto’s raison d'être. Not much later, Musk was championing Dogecoin DOGE/USD.
In the days that followed, bitcoin fell to $30,000-levels, losing more than a third of its value in a single day on May 19 before recovering. Many other cryptocurrencies fell even more sharply.
Musk also said that Tesla sold about 10% of holdings to confirm bitcoin could be liquidated easily without moving market.
Both Tesla and Musk, in his personal capacity, had invested in bitcoin. The EV maker had pumped in $1.5 billion in February. It’s not certain how much bitcoin Tesla and Musk still hold.