Bitcoin’s environmentally unfriendly nature is an issue for 46 percent of UK investors, financial markets platform uk.Investing.com has revealed today in newly released data.
According to the survey of 837 UK respondents, 32 percent of Bitcoin investors sold Bitcoin last month, with 1 in 5 attributing their sale to Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s comments about the environment on May 13. While 79 percent of investors would favour a more green cryptocurrency, 30 percent didn’t even realise that Bitcoin had environmental implications before Musk’s recent public comments on the issue.
“Bitcoin has an energy problem, as its network consumes more power than entire countries, like the Netherlands, or Pakistan,” said Jesse Cohen, senior analyst at uk.Investing.com. “Ripple and Cardano, for example, are two cryptocurrencies which have less environmental impact than BTC and are more efficient in terms of their mining and transaction environmental costs.”
Delving further into Elon Musk’s influence in the cryptocurrency space, the survey asked respondents if the Tesla chief’s manipulation of cryptocurrency values has changed their view of that investment. Fifty-seven percent agreed that Musk “has too much power” and 34 percent said that cryptocurrencies in general “are too volatile.” Just twelve percent don’t believe Musk has too much influence over cryptocurrencies and another 12 percent said his influence makes them “more confident about digital currencies.”
Eighty percent of investors disagree that the future of Bitcoin hinges on Musk. Forty-three percent consider his cryptocurrency tweets “annoying,” 29 percent described them as “unfair,” and 22 percent deemed them “entertaining.” Following Musk’s appearance on Saturday Night Live last month which sent Dogecoin plunging nearly 30 percent, as many as 34 percent of investors found the Tesla CEO less likeable.
“After being hailed and crowned as king of the crypto community, Elon Musk has made himself some new enemies lately, following his recent shock about-face on Bitcoin,” Cohen continued. “For an asset whose price is driven mostly by psychological sentiment and momentum, Bitcoin could have a hard time recovering from this and may never revisit their record highs again.”
Moving forward, 73 percent expressed support for policies that would reduce the power of big influencers such as Musk when it comes to manipulating financial markets.
The full story is on Investing.com at: https://uk.investing.com/blog/elon-musk-visionary-or-fraud-37
Methodology: This poll was conducted on June 10-12 based on interviews with 837 UK-based adults from uk.Investing.com’s user database. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
