Elon Musk crashes Bitcoin further after seeming threat to dump coin

Elon Musk crashes Bitcoin further after seeming threat to dump coin

Bitcoin took a 6.99 per cent drop to near $45,100 as at 11:00 p.m. WAT on Sunday evening after Tesla CEO Elon Musk did not clearly deny that his electric-car company has sold or could soon sell all of its bitcoin (BTC) holdings because of the criticism Musk has received after suspending the world’s largest cryptocurrency as a form of payment.

“Indeed,” Musk tweeted at 7:42 p.m. WAT in a response to a tweet by Twitter handle @CryptoWhale, which said that “Bitcoiners are going to slap themselves next quarter when they find out Tesla dumped the rest of their #Bitcoin holdings.”

Indeed

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 16, 2021

Bitcoin’s price dropped immediately after the tweet, to near $45,100 and eventually sank to as low as $44,459.02 before recovering.

In recent trading, bitcoin had bounced back a bit to $45,627.90, down 4.98 per cent in the past 24 hours, according to CoinDesk 20.

Earlier the day, Musk also tweeted at Peter McCormack, who posted a Twitter thread about Musk’s criticism of bitcoin and support for dogecoin (DOGE), saying that “obnoxious threads like this make me want to go all in on Doge.”

At press time, dogecoin (DOGE) is changing hands at $0.4915, down 4.53 per centin the past 24 hours, according to CoinDesk 20.

Recall that Musk on May 12 announced that Tesla is discontinuing bitcoin payments due to concerns around its environmental impact, which sent bitcoin down by $2,000.