Experts think Elon Musk might have inadvertently promoted XRP

In citing the negative impacts of Bitcoin mining on the environment as the main reason for Tesla’s decision to stop accepting the crypto as payment, many pundits think Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk may have inadvertently promoted another cryptocurrency, Ripple’s XRP.

It can be recalled that last week, Musk announced that Tesla would cease in taking Bitcoin as payment for their products, implying it wasn’t environmentally friendly enough for them.

Immediately after, the largest digital currency by market capitalization suffered significant price drops. At the time of writing, Bitcoin’s value is at $44.3K, and it is staring at a 19.7% drop over the last seven days.

Looking for greener cryptocurrency

The sentiments expressed by Musk had experts believe he and his company might be looking for greener crypto, and that’s where Ripple comes in with their “green cryptocurrency” – the XRP.

Ripple’s Chief Technology Officer David Schwartz said, “Bitcoin is 57,000 times less eco-friendly than XRP,” adding sustainability is one of the digital currency’s driving points.

In a recent blog post, a comparison of energy consumption for 1 million Bitcoin and XRP transactions was made. While XRP’s 1 million transactions could power 79,000 lightbulb hours, it was nowhere near the 4.51 billion lightbulb hours powered by the same amount of Bitcoin transactions.

Is XRP in a good position now?

The Twitter statement of Elon Musk might not have directly redirected users to Ripple’s XRP, but analysts say that if Tesla is looking for a green cryptocurrency to replace Bitcoin, it could be XRP. But is the so-called green crypto in a good position now?

While XRP is currently trading at $1.53 and has seen a 9.1% increase in the past week, Ripple’s ongoing court battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission may prove to be a wrinkle for any of its Tesla-related future plans.

Image courtesy of Cointelegraph News/YouTube