Elon Musk’s Tesla Reverses Decision To Accept Vehicle Purchases By Bitcoin

Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced by tweet that the company will not be accepting payment for its vehicles by bitcoin (at least for now), reversing a high-profile company policy announced in March.

Musk, a prominent crypocurrency enthusiast, further tweeted, “To be clear, I strongly believe in crypto, but it can’t drive a massive increase in fossil fuel use, especially coal.” Bitcoin mining has often been criticised for its staggeringly high energy costs, which in turn generate more carbon emissions that contribute to climate change.

Musk himself tweeted a chart of bitcoin’s electricity consumption:

Many have highlighted the billionaire entrepreneur’s apparently contradictory support for both environmental causes and cryptocurrency. One recent study warned that the immense scale of bitcoin mining in China could cause the country to miss its carbon emission reduction goals.

As of April last year, over 70% of the world’s bitcoin mining took place in China. While the country boasts cheaper electricity rates, it’s also known to be reliant on coal power.

Despite warnings about bitcoin’s impact on the environment, Tesla went ahead and bought US$1.5 billion (~RM6.2 billion) worth of bitcoin in February. The following month, it announced it would begin accepting payment for cars made with bitcoin. It’s unclear why Musk (and Tesla management in general) changed their minds now.

Tesla said that it would use bitcoin for transactions “as soon as mining transitions to more sustainable energy.” Earlier this week, Musk celebrated SpaceX’s involvement in a mission to the moon that is fully funded with dogecoin, another cryptocurrency.

Sony Reverses Decision To Close PS3, PS Vita Stores

Late last month, Sony Interactive Entertainment quietly decided to end the online stores for the PS3, PSP and PS Vita. Following the unsurprising backlash, the company has reversed the decision, at least partially. It looks like the PS3 and PS Vita stores are here to stay for awhile more. The PSP store is still scheduled to go on 2 July though.

The announcement came via the official PlayStation blog, penned by company head honcho Jim Ryan. In the post, Ryan did not include the exact details behind the company coming to the decision to close the stores initially. All that he shared was “a number of factors, including commerce support challenges for older devices”. That, and the desire to redirect resources to current generation machines instead, “where a majority of our gamers are playing on”.

It’s no doubt good news for those who still enjoy games on the PS3 and the PS Vita. It’s a bummer for PSP owners, unless they also own a PS3. Then there’s a potential workaround that involves getting the games for the Sony handheld onto the console first, and then transferring them out.

Overall, it’s good news for a lot of games on the PS3 and PS Vita. Hopefully this also solves the issue of games not getting their patches as well.

Russia Backtracks on Decision To Block Twitter After Receiving Signs of Cooperation

The Russian government is seemingly backing off from banning Twitter for now, seeing how the platform has somewhat agreed to delete banned content faster. Still, regulators said they would continue to throttle Twitter’s speed in the country until mid-May.

Last month, Russia accused the social media platform of failure to remove posts related to suicide, drugs, and child pornography. State regulators then began slowing down the loading of photo and video content on Twitter, threatening to block the platform completely if it didn’t change course.

But according to the Associated Press (AP), Roskomnadzor – the country’s media regulating authority – said on Monday that it had decided against a ban, “taking into account the decision made by Twitter for the first time to change the principles and speed of its own moderation service in Russia, and the removal of a significant part of the prohibited content.”

The agency noted that Twitter was taking 81 hours to delete banned content after receiving notification – a far cry from the 24 hours required by law. But officials were willing to give the company more time to comply after holding talks with it on 1 April, Reuters said.

Russian officials previously slammed social media platforms for enabling street protests that demanded the release of jailed government critic Alexei Navalny. Last Friday, a Moscow court fined Twitter 8.9 million Rubles (~RM477000) for not removing content that encouraged minors to participate in unauthorised protests.