Elon Musk has confirmed Tesla will likely start accepting bitcoin again once more renewable energy is used to create it.
The electric car company had originally halted the ability to pay for its vehicles via the cryptocurrency in May, despite purchasing US$1.5 billion worth in February.
Musk has originally tweeted that when "reasonable clean energy" was used by miners, only then Tesla will resume allowing bitcoin transactions.
That was in response to accusations he was manipulating the price of bitcoin by public statements.
During a chat with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey today, Musk indicated he believed bitcoin was already shifting towards more renewable energy.
"I wanted to do a bit more diligence to confirm that the percentage of renewable energy usage is most likely at or above 50 percent, and that there is a trend towards increasing that number, and if so then Tesla would resume accepting bitcoin,” Musk said.
"Most likely the answer is that Tesla would resume accepting bitcoin. Most likely."
The price of bitcoin, which had dropped below US$30,000 this week, spiked to over US$32,000 afterwards.
But Musk again denied his public pronouncements on cryptocurrencies were trying to influence the price.
"The three things I own outside of SpaceX and Tesla of any significance are bitcoin by far and some ethereum and some doge," he said, referring to three of the most popular cryptocurrencies.
"If the price of bitcoin goes down, I lose money. I might pump, but I don't dump. I definitely do not believe in getting the price high and selling or anything like that."
Meanwhile Dorsey, who is also CEO of Square - a US financial services and digital payments company - said he believes cryptocurrencies can bring about a peaceful planet.
"My hope is that it creates world peace or helps create world peace," Dorsey told Musk.
"We have all these monopolies off balance and the individual doesn’t have power and the amount of cost and distraction that comes from our monetary system today is real and it takes away attention from the bigger problems."
"All these distractions that we have to deal with on a daily basis take away from those bigger goals that affect every single person on this planet and increasingly so," he said,
"You fix that foundational level and everything above it improves in such a dramatic way. It's going to be long-term but my hope is definitely peace."
