Can Elon Musk’s Bitcoin Betrayal Expose the Grift of Cryptocurrency?

It’s a dark day on meme street. Elon Musk, one of Bitcoin’s high priests, seems to have turned against the cryptocurrency, sending its value tumbling more than 10 percent and calling into question an economic model that had depended on the public support of megamoguls to keep crypto prices frothy.Here’s how the betrayal went down. On Wednesday evening, Musk, who in recent months has been a manic booster of the cryptocurrencies Bitcoin and Dogecoin, tweeted an announcement that Tesla would no longer be accepting Bitcoin for vehicle purchases.“We are concerned about rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal, which has the worst emissions of any fuel,” wrote Musk. He then praised cryptocurrency as “a good idea on many levels” that needs reform to make it more environmentally sustainable. Tesla, he concluded, was “looking at other cryptocurrencies that use Read More