Musk Tweet Triggers Massive Shock, Bitcoin Plummets $10,000 — Can the Bull Market Continue?
Shortly after U.S. markets closed on Wednesday, Tesla CEO Musk suddenly announced on Twitter that Tesla had suspended the use of Bitcoin payment, citing concerns over fossil fuel consumption — especially coal — driven by Bitcoin mining and trading, as coal is the most environmentally damaging of all fossil fuels.
According to OKX market data, Bitcoin plummeted from $54,535.7, briefly dropping below the $50,000 mark with a decline exceeding 12%, bottoming out at $45,750.0. As of press time, Bitcoin was trading at $50,450. Bitcoin's total market cap fell below the $1 trillion threshold to $945.5 billion, down nearly 11%.
This came less than two months after Tesla's U.S. website announced on March 24 that it would accept Bitcoin payment. At that time, with Bitcoin added as a payment option, Bitcoin rose as much as 6.5% within six hours. Looking back further, on February 8 when Tesla announced it had purchased $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin, Bitcoin surged 15.22% in a single day, climbing to a high of $44,625.0.
Musk's tweet has once again thrust Bitcoin's carbon emissions issue into the spotlight, sparking heated environmental debates. Bitcoin advocates and opponents have dug in on their respective sides, and whether the increasingly heated environmental debate will become a Sword of Damocles hanging over Bitcoin remains to be seen. Meanwhile, quite a few projects took the opportunity to "self-promote" in the comments of Musk's tweet, hoping to catch his attention.
Notably, the total cryptocurrency market cap declined 8.4% in this rout, lower than Bitcoin's 11%, suggesting that some altcoins are beginning to "decouple" from Bitcoin and move independently. Bitcoin's market dominance fell to a nearly three-year low of 42.22%.
On another front, Vitalik accelerated his Meme coin selling spree, donating 50 trillion SHIB to an Indian COVID relief fund. Affected by this, the Meme coin sector broadly declined, with SHIB dropping nearly 30%.
Bitcoin Mining Sparks Musk's Environmental Concerns
Musk's morning tweet sent shockwaves through the community, with Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenshein, MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor, and others rushing to comment and retweet.
In his tweet, Musk stated that the future of cryptocurrency looks promising, but should not come at a major cost to the environment. He also seemed to try to reassure the market, saying Tesla would not sell any Bitcoin, and that Tesla would resume Bitcoin trading as long as Bitcoin transitions to using other sustainable energy sources as soon as possible.
Those supporting Musk, such as Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz, noted that Musk cares about the environment and is using his influence to push Bitcoin mining toward a greener future, with many companies in the space already working toward this goal. Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenshein stated that renewable energy will play an increasingly important role in the future of cryptocurrency, and that he wants to brainstorm with the smartest minds in the cryptocurrency space to find environmentally friendly solutions.
Bitcoin supporters such as Morgan Creek Digital co-founder Anthony Pompliano fired back at Musk, pointing out that he should know that 75% of miners use renewable energy to mine Bitcoin. He then retweeted an article from the Human Rights Foundation, stating that "those who oppose Bitcoin are openly calling for tens of millions of people around the world to continue suffering." Anthony Pompliano likely cited the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance's third global crypto asset benchmark study released in 2020.
MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor, who introduced Musk to Bitcoin, appeared to suggest that Musk's claims about Bitcoin trading's energy consumption don't hold up, as Bitcoin uses no incremental energy in trading beyond the mining process, and that Bitcoin mining's demand for fossil energy is negligible and declining over time.
Is Carbon Emissions Bitcoin's Greatest Threat?
Controversy over Bitcoin's energy consumption has actually existed for some time. As a highly influential figure in both traditional circles and the crypto world, Musk's tweet stating his concerns about Bitcoin's energy consumption has undoubtedly added fuel to the fire regarding Bitcoin's carbon emissions issue.
Against the backdrop of massive global monetary easing, an increasing number of institutions have shifted their focus from traditional assets to Bitcoin. The "institutional bull market" envisioned by the community has become a reality, and Bitcoin's recognition has grown ever wider, which has also driven Bitcoin's price higher. From October 2020, Bitcoin's price surged nearly 5x to its peak. During this period, OK Link data shows that Bitcoin's total network hashrate reached 180.17 EH/s, a 30% increase over seven months.
As Bitcoin's hashrate climbed, it also drew public attention to Bitcoin's electricity consumption. On February 14, Cambridge researchers released data showing that if Bitcoin were a country, its electricity consumption would exceed that of Argentina, the Netherlands, and other countries for an entire year, ranking among the top 30 globally. The annual electricity consumption from mining activities is approximately 123.16 billion kWh — beyond what most people can fathom. Unless Bitcoin prices drop significantly, electricity consumption will only continue to rise.
On April 6, scholars from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Tsinghua University published a paper titled "Policy Assessment of Carbon Emissions and Sustainability of Bitcoin Blockchain Operations in China" in Nature Communications. The paper stated that without any policy intervention, China's Bitcoin annual energy consumption is projected to peak at 296.59 billion kWh in 2024, generating 130.5 million metric tons of carbon emissions — which would rank Bitcoin mining's emissions among the top 10 out of 182 prefecture-level cities and 42 major industrial sectors in China.
One of the paper's authors, Professor Guan Dabo from the Department of Earth System Science at Tsinghua University, stated that Bitcoin or other financial products, and indeed all emerging industries in the future, must have green attributes such as carbon reduction, low carbonization, or even zero carbonization.
Additionally, with Bitcoin's price surging, the establishment of overseas mining facilities and procurement of mining hardware have also accelerated. At the end of April, Core Scientific, North America's largest crypto mining giant, purchased 112,800 ASIC Bitcoin miners from Bitmain. Meanwhile, Canaan and crypto mining enterprise Genesis Digital Assets entered into a long-term strategic partnership, signing a purchase order valued at $93.63 million for Avalon A1246 miners. As we all know, environmental awareness has always been particularly prominent in Western countries, and the massive布局 of mining enterprises has led to boycotts and criticism from European and American environmental organizations and opinion leaders.
The industry has clearly taken note of this issue. The moment Musk's tweet went out, Core Scientific responded that as North America's largest Bitcoin mining and hosting company, it is 100% carbon neutral, and that they are helping to stabilize load for power companies while actively creating jobs.
Carbon neutrality is undoubtedly one of the hottest topics today, with more than 120 countries and two-thirds of the global economy joining the grand transition to "carbon neutrality." Using renewable energy for cryptocurrency mining has already become a trend. Many mainstream media outlets reported that Gryphon Digital Mining, a Bitcoin mining company, announced on April 14 that it had raised $14 million in Series A funding, with institutional investors accounting for more than 30%, with the goal of creating the world's largest zero-carbon-footprint Bitcoin miner. Gryphon Digital Mining CEO and co-founder Rob Chang said: "We commit to not using [fossil fuels] going forward, and will instead use hydropower, nuclear, solar, or wind energy."
On March 26, Argo Blockchain, a UK-listed cryptocurrency mining company, stated it had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with blockchain and cryptocurrency technology company DMG to launch the first Bitcoin mining pool entirely powered by clean energy.
ARK Investment Management, managed by "investment queen" Cathie Wood, published a Bitcoin research report on April 21, stating that Bitcoin can create a better green energy system. The core concept is to mine cryptocurrency using excess renewable energy and generate profits, and this additional revenue will drive more investment and development in renewable energy.
Of course, Bitcoin supporters in the community argue that opponents should not simply condemn Bitcoin's environmental costs — the energy consumption issues in traditional industries are also severe. For instance, the current banking system's annual energy consumption far exceeds 140 billion kWh. Researching clean energy, especially the transition to low-carbon systems, is not merely a pressing issue for Bitcoin to address.
Do Institutions Still Remain Bullish on Bitcoin?
Musk's remarks caused Bitcoin to plummet more than $12,000 in 24 hours at its worst. The last time Bitcoin dropped $10,000 in a single day was on April 18, driven by three rumors: that the U.S. Treasury would charge several financial institutions for using cryptocurrency for money laundering, that Coinbase executives were heavily dumping stock, and that Turkey had banned Bitcoin payment. However, all three rumors were subsequently debunked.
As the market has reached this point, an increasing number of people are shifting their focus from "When will Bitcoin reach $100,000?" to "Is the bull market still here?" After all, the market has become increasingly sensitive to news-driven reactions.
Tradingview data shows that Bitcoin's market dominance has dropped to 42.22%, its lowest since June 14, 2018.
The all-time low was 36.62%, recorded on January 13, 2018 — meaning 42.22% is only 5.6 percentage points away from that record low.
As Bitcoin briefly plummeted, many altcoins barely followed the decline, with some even surging sharply. Several altcoins reached all-time highs against Bitcoin's exchange rate, indicating that we are in the midst of an altcoin frenzy. Although this bull market is completely different from the previous one — including institutional participation and large-scale blockchain application deployments — the experience of the 2018 bull market peak still inevitably reminds us to be mindful of the risks that follow altcoin manias.
It has been pointed out that when Musk and Tesla announced the investment in Bitcoin and further acceptance of Bitcoin payment, the discourse about "Bitcoin being environmentally unfriendly" was already circulating, but Musk never responded. However, suspending Bitcoin payment at a time when market interest rate hike expectations are heating up raises suspicions about Musk's bearish outlook on Bitcoin, especially given that U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed that the U.S. CPI (Consumer Price Index) rose 4.2% year-over-year at the end of April, its highest since September 2008, with inflation data far exceeding expectations and interest rate hike probabilities surging.
Glassnode data shows that Bitcoin's net exchange inflow on May 12 reached an all-time high for the year at 25,921.8 BTC, suggesting a premeditated whale sell-off.
OK Link data shows that as of May 13, major institutions held $25.35 billion worth of Bitcoin, accounting for 2.69% of Bitcoin's total market cap. However, a recent trend is that reports of large institutional accumulation have noticeably declined, while retail traders are rushing in aggressively. The recent Meme coin frenzy in particular has attracted a large wave of new users entering the market, driving extreme market euphoria.
Beyond expressing concerns about Bitcoin's environmental issues, Musk also stated that Tesla is seeking to use other cryptocurrencies with lower energy consumption than Bitcoin as a payment method for Tesla. The moment this was announced, Musk's Twitter comment section instantly became a highly contested "advertising spot" for various projects. Dogecoin co-founder Billy Marcus noted that a coin with a dog logo (Dogecoin) has a much smaller carbon footprint than Bitcoin. Block.one CEO Brendan Blumer suggested Tesla support EOS payment.
Although Bitcoin's future trajectory remains unclear, considering the wild effect of Musk's previous "calls" for Dogecoin, his apparent search for a new target seems set to send another shockwave through the community.
Disclaimer
This article may contain product content not applicable to your region. This article is intended to provide general information only and makes no representation as to any factual errors or omissions. This article represents the author's personal views only and does not represent the views of OKX. This article is not intended to provide any advice, including but not limited to: (i) investment advice or investment recommendations; (ii) offers or solicitations to buy, sell, or hold digital assets; or (iii) financial, accounting, legal, or tax advice. Holding digital assets (including stablecoins) involves a high degree of risk and may be subject to significant price fluctuations, and may even become worthless. You should carefully consider whether trading or holding digital assets is appropriate for you based on your financial situation. For questions specific to your circumstances, please consult your legal/tax/investment professional. The information contained in this article (including market data and statistics, where applicable) is for general reference purposes only. While all reasonable precautions have been taken in the preparation of such data and charts, we assume no responsibility for any factual errors or omissions expressed herein. © 2025 OKX. This article may be reproduced or distributed in its entirety, and excerpts of 100 words or less may be used, provided that such use is non-commercial in nature. Any reproduction or distribution of the entire article must prominently state: "This article is copyrighted © 2025 OKX, used with permission." Permitted excerpts must cite the article title and include attribution, for example "Article Title, [Author Name (if applicable)], © 2025 OKX." Some content may have been generated or assisted by artificial intelligence (AI) tools. Derivative works and other uses of this article are not permitted.
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