Lionel Laurent, Columnist

Elon Musk Conveniently Ignored Bitcoin's Inconvenient Truth

Where does the future of money end and the “hustle” begin?

May 13, 2021 at 6:30 AM UTC

Lionel Laurent is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist writing about the future of money and the future of Europe. Previously, he was a reporter for Reuters and Forbes.

He can’t have it both ways.
Photographer: ERIC PIERMONT/AFP

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When electric carmaker Tesla Inc. said in February it would buy $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin and start accepting it as payment, billionaire boss Elon Musk had little to say about the cryptocurrency’s wasteful energy consumption — despite the obvious inconsistency with his firm’s green credentials.

And when fellow Bitcoin bulls Jack Dorsey and Cathie Wood last month backed a report claiming that combining cryptocurrency mining and renewable-energy projects could be good for the environment, Musk praised the paper as “true,” even though its optimistic and overconfident assumptions smacked of greenwashing.