has hinted that Tesla could have dumped the remainder of its Bitcoin holdings in a cryptic tweet posted on Sunday afternoon. 

Tesla bought about $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin back in February, around the time it announced it would accept the cryptocurrency as payment for its products. 

However, it was revealed earlier this week that the company sold off about $272million in Bitcoin during Q1 of this year. 

On Wednesday, Tesla also announced that it would no longer accept Bitcoin as payment, citing environmental concerns. 

The announcement caused the value of Bitcoin to drop dramatically in the wake of that news.  

The cryptocurre on Friday.

Bitcoin, the world’s biggest digital currency, has surged five-fold in the past year alone. The rise comes amid an increasingly fraught debate over the environmental costs of the world’s most popular cryptocurrency. 

Crypto is ‘mined’ by high-powered computers that require huge amounts of energy to continuously solve computational math puzzles. With each solved problem, a certain amount of coin is produced. 

While the machines use electricity, fossil fuel is a major category in electricity generation.

Environmentalists argue that the creation of the cryptocurrency may harm efforts to limit global warming.

The rising price of Bitcoin in the last two years has resulted in carbon emissions increasing by more than 40 million tons, a BofA Securities report said. That rise is the equivalent of 8.9 million additional cars on the road. 

That same reported noted Bitcoin’s energy consumption is comparable to that of major US corporations like American Airlines or even the US government.

Bitcoin also consumes more electricity than many countries. 

It consumes almost the same amount of electricity annually as Egypt, according to an index compiled by the University of Cambridge that cites 2019 data from the US Energy Information Administration.   

Musk tweeted a link to that study on Thursday, saying: ‘Energy usage trend over past few months is insane.’ 

He later tweeted: ‘To be clear, I strongly believe in crypto, but it can’t drive a massive increase in fossil fuel use, especially coal.’  

This week’s tweets about Bitcoin are not the first time that Musk has manipulated the stock market with his Twitter account. 

Back in January, the Tesla founder added the word ‘#bitcoin’ to his Twitter bio prompting the price of the cryptocurrency to soar. 

The billionaire is an extremely influential figure on Twitter, where he is followed by 43.8 million users. 

However, he has a record of making market-moving comments on the site, which have caused widespread criticism and led him into legal trouble. 

Back in August 2018, Musk shared a tweet claiming that he had ‘funding secured’ to take Tesla private at $420 a share. It sent the company’s stock soaring and forced a halt in binary option trading uk reviews of asmf.

Musk reportedly gained $851 million in the wake of posting that tweet. 

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Musk for fraud for ‘false and misleading tweets’ claiming he simply chose the $420 price because the number is a marijuana reference which would ‘amuse’ his girlfriend. 

Musk was fined $20 million and was forced to resign as chairman of Tesla after reaching a settlement with the Commission.  

Later that year, Musk and the SEC subsequently reached a separate deal which required the the billionaire to have tweets about certain topic pre-approved by an experienced securities lawyer.  

He must now not tweet out information about Tesla’s financial condition, potential or proposed merger,  production numbers or sales, or new or proposed business lines’ for fear it could manipulate the market.