Which ‘green’ cryptocurrency is Tesla likely to add for payments?

On May 13, Elon Musk sent shockwaves across the crypto markets by revealing that Tesla will no longer accept any BTC payments for cars until Bitcoin mining becomes more environmentally sustainable. Musk notes that while Tesla waits for Bitcoin to move to renewable energy, the firm will be looking at “other cryptocurrencies” that use less than 1% of Bitcoin’s energy per transaction.

The tweet sent much of the crypto community into a frenzy of speculation as to what other crypto assets Tesla may be exploring. Social influencer “The Cryptic Poet,” told his 45,000 Twitter followers that he predicts Tesla will “either use ETH or XRP,” however user “Massimo” pointed out that if Tesla uses ETH in its current state — which uses Proof-of-Work just like Bitcoin does — it might as well be “staying with BTC.”

According to an analysis by TRG data centers, Bitcoin is estimated to average around 700 kilowatt-hours, or KWh, per transaction. While it uses around as much power each year as the Netherlands, it’s annual carbon footprint is closer to Singapore’s according to Digiconomist, presumably due to the use of cheap renewable power for a considerable proportion of mining.

Ripple
Ripple (XRP) could be Tesla’s choice in the immediate term (depending on the SEC lawsuit), as all XRP tokens were pre-mined and XRP’s transactions incur a tiny amount of energy of just 0.0079 KWh according to TRG data centers.

Stellar
Stellar Lumens (XLM) also follows the model of XRP as all of its tokens were minted at genesis.

Algorand
Algorand could be a contender. Not only does it run on Pure Proof-of-Stake but the team announced its blockchain had become fully carbon-neutral on April 22.

Dogecoin
Elon Musk’s long-standing favorite Dogecoin could be the dark horse (dark dog?) in this race. The meme coin actually piggybacks much of its mining on the Litecoin network, which uses Proof-of-Work. But while Bitcoin mining employs the ultra-complex SHA-256 algorithm.

Which ‘green’ cryptocurrency is Tesla likely to add for payments?, Cointelegraph, May 13