By Samuel Indyk
Investing.com – The price of Bitcoin was within a whisker of $40,000 on Monday (NASDAQ:MNDY) morning after Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted about the world’s largest cryptocurrency on Sunday.
Replying to a tweet suggesting he was manipulating the price, Elon Musk said, “When there’s confirmation of reasonable (~50%) clean energy usage by miners with positive future trend, Tesla will resume allowing Bitcoin transactions.”
The comment lifted the price of Bitcoin, which had traded as much as 50% below its all-time high towards the end of last week.
After hitting a high of near $65,000 in April, Bitcoin tumbled after Musk announced that Tesla would stop accepting Bitcoin as payment for vehicles, citing the environmental impact of mining and transactions. And the price has remained in a range between $30,000 and $40,000 since late May.
Although the price of Bitcoin is higher by around 12%, the comments do not tend to add too much new information to what Musk has previously said.
At the time Tesla announced they would stop accepting Bitcoin, Musk still said he was still a believer in cryptocurrencies and confirmed that the electric vehicle company intended to use its Bitcoin holdings for transactions as soon as mining transitions to more sustainable energy.
However, these latest comments have not only lifted the price of Bitcoin but most other major cryptocurrencies too.
All the ten largest coins are trading with gains of over 5% in the last 24 hours, including, Ethereum, Binance Coin, Cardano, Dogecoin and XRP.
From a technical standpoint, bulls will be hoping a break of $40,000 to the upside could trigger another move higher.
“The charts suggest consolidation followed by a rally through $41,000.00 targets further gains to around $44,000.00,” said Jeffrey Halley, Senior Market Analyst at OANDA.
On the other hand, if the $40,000 resistance holds then further price weakness could be observed with markets keeping an eye on the convergence of the 50DMA and 200DMA, which if they cross, would signal a death cross formation.
At 08:57BST, Bitcoin was trading at $39,500, up 12% in the last 24 hours.