According to CNN, billionaire Elon Musk said that Tesla will suspend plans to accept Bitcoin as a means of payment when customers buy its cars. The reason Musk gave is that using Bitcoin costs the environment. This is a completely opposite move after a few months Musk launched Bitcoin “to the cloud”. According to the billionaire: “We are concerned about using more and more fossil fuels to mine and trade Bitcoin, especially coal. Cryptocurrency is a good idea on many levels and we believe in it.” “That is a promising future, but accepting and using digital money cannot come with a hefty price tag on the environment.” Immediately after that, the Bitcoin price fell 5% just minutes after Elon Musk’s announcement. A few hours later, Bitcoin price even bottomed to just over $ 46,000 / 1 Bitcoin and then recovered slightly. The fact that Elon Musk publicly supports Bitcoin while claiming Tesla is a “green” company when it comes to making electric, eco-friendly cars has always been controversial. Photo: TL. Everyone knows that mining Bitcoin takes a lot of energy and pollutes the environment. Bitcoin miners consume a lot of power to solve mathematical equations, validate transaction codes to receive back a certain amount of money worked. Some calculations show that the total electricity consumption of Bitcoin miners in the world is equivalent to the total electricity consumption of Finland. The fact that billionaire Elon Musk publicly supports Bitcoin while claiming Tesla is a “green” company when making electric cars, environmentally friendly has always been controversial. However, the CEO also left open plans that Tesla will still use Bitcoin when it finds a cleaner source of energy. “Tesla won’t sell any Bitcoin and we intend to accept Bitcoin for transactions as soon as mining converts to more sustainable energy. We are also looking at other cryptocurrencies that use less. 1% of energy / transactions that Bitcoin uses “. This new statement by Elon Musk surprised many people because earlier in a statement on the social audio application Clubhouse, the billionaire said “Bitcoin is a good thing”, adding that he is “late” and perhaps out bought cryptocurrency 8 years ago. The richest billionaire in the world added that he should have bought Bitcoin eight years ago. “I have been quite slow. But at this point, I think Bitcoin is a good thing,” billionaire Elon Musk said. Is the “pump blow”? Bitcoin is not the only cryptocurrency Musk has pumped in in recent weeks. He has repeatedly praised Dogecoin through his Twitter account with 54 million followers. Dogecoin even dropped when Musk joined Saturday Night Live and said: “Recently, the prices of many cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum and especially Dogecoin have increased”. Musk’s last tweet before the Bitcoin-related surprise announcement was also a question to poll his followers to see if they wanted “Tesla to accept Doge as a means of payment”. Photo: TL. Earlier in February, Tesla publicly stated that it had spent $ 1.5 billion on Bitcoin investments. Later in April, records showed they sold 10% of their Bitcoin holdings, making a profit of $ 101 million. The move caused a few rumors to emerge, suspecting that there was some kind of fraud when Tesla bought Bitcoin, Elon Musk said like it and then Tesla sold it. Twitter user Dave Portnoy had a post that would have tagged Elon Musk on this. Dave used the word “pump” to describe Tesla’s actions on Twitter. He wrote: “As I understand it: Elon Musk bought Bitcoin then he blew up, praised Bitcoin. Bitcoin price increased. Then Elon Musk sold out and pocketed a lot of money.” Elon Musk then responded under this post, “Oh no, I don’t. Tesla selling 10% of its Bitcoin holdings is necessary to demonstrate Bitcoin’s liquidity as an alternative channel to hold money. face”.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s company believes that the combination of audio formats, as well as the combination of text, sound and images, will create many magical features that meet the expectations of users. Facebook’s adjustment of the feature stems from actual user tastes as more and more people choose to use voice, from audio calls on social networks to leaving voice messages on WhatsApp’s app. Messenger. Currently, Facebook is building new sound generators “like having a recording studio in the user’s pocket.” These tools will let people create short recordings, such as jokes. There are more than 170 million people connected to Facebook pages using podcasts, and about 35 million users are members of podcast fan groups. However, at the moment, listening to audio on podcasts forces users to leave the social network. With Facebook’s improved feature, in the near future, users will be able to listen to podcasts directly on the app, using both at the same time. according to TechCrunch

Facebook has presented a service that competes with the Clubhouse audio app, which is attracting a great deal of attention with its current success. The new Facebook product called “Live Audio Rooms” is scheduled to launch this summer. CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that hearing products in the group should in future have the same meaning as photos or videos. Unlike the newcomer Clubhouse, Facebook can fall back on a base of more than 2.5 billion users.

Audio offensive starts

The chat room is therefore only one example of the planned audio offensive, the motto of which is “Be heard”. Telling stories helps people create meaningful relationships, says Facebook in a blog post. In addition, audio tools are to be made available via Facebook, a “sound studio in your pocket”. “Soundbites” can be used to create small audio clips.

Cooperation with Spotify

In cooperation with the music streaming market leader Spotify, you will also be able to listen to podcasts directly in the Facebook app in order to keep users in the Facebook cosmos. Facebook wants to suggest individual podcasts based on its knowledge of the interests of the users. “We all have stories that we can share with our friends, the community and the whole world,” emphasizes the group, whose business model is to make money from user data and tailored advertising.

Copy or Buy?

In the fourth quarter of 2020, Facebook had made a profit of more than eleven billion dollars. The social network would have easily had enough money to buy the clubhouse. A well-known strategy, as Facebook simply took over the WhatsApp chat service in 2014, for example. Clubhouse is currently valued at around four billion dollars . The company recently completed a new round of financing and raised fresh money to drive the growth course. Four billion also corresponds to the purchase price that, according to media reports, Twitter wanted to pay for the purchase of the app. The deal did not materialize, however. Facebook finally decided to copy the success. Twitter is also trying to score in the audio sector and is already testing a similar offer. The online forum Reddit has also announced a competitive clubhouse offer. In addition to the Reddit chat groups, there will also be an audio chat room called Reddit Talk in the future. The product is currently in the test phase.

The management of the audio app Clubhouse has raised fresh money from investors. On the one hand, this is intended to cope with the rush of users over the past few months. Clubhouse wants to “welcome more users”, strengthen its infrastructure and “support” the providers of the discussions. The rapid growth meant that the servers were overloaded, and the algorithms were not designed for the high number of users. According to the company, around ten million users are currently on the platform every week. On the other hand, the capital injection should also serve to drive the growth course further. So far, Clubhouse has been above target in this regard: Clubhouse has “grown faster than expected,” the company said.

Success arouses desire

The audio-based social network app had already completed a financing round in January. As reported by financial news agency Bloomberg, Clubhouse is now worth around four billion dollars. That corresponds to around 3.3 billion euros and is four times as much as in January. The success of the app developed by Alpha Explorations in the USA last spring arouses desires and imitators. According to media reports, the news service Twitter is said to have recently been interested in a purchase, and Facebook is said to be working on a clubhouse clone. Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg recently had a look in the virtual salon himself, and Tesla boss Elon Musk was also a guest – this of course increases the attractiveness of the audio offering. Listen to important people once: Many clubhouse users are likely to know these or similar wishes.

Privacy advocates warn

But the success story also has its downsides. Data protection advocates repeatedly express serious concerns. A relevant incident occurred only recently. In a hacker forum, data from 1.3 million clubhouse users emerged. Clubhouse denied being hacked. The data is publicly visible in the profile information that has been tapped in bulk, including name, user name, user ID, profile photos and contact lists. Sensitive data such as credit card information were not included. Such information could be used for targeted phishing attacks, warns the consumer advice center. The data can also be used to create fake accounts in social networks and practically carry out identity theft. The consumer association also criticizes the fact that conversations are recorded and evaluated on the servers in the USA. In addition, the app would have access to all saved contacts in the phone book.

Photo: Axios Sharing with the community on the Discord chat app, Mark Zuckerberg announced a product roadmap that Facebook will launch within the next 3 to 6 months. Products that the head of Facebook announced include: Photo: Axios – Soundbites: Short audio product of Facebook to serve users. Mark Zuckerberg says the product looks like an audio version of Reels (similar video product to Instagram’s TikTok). Users can share short audio clips on their News Feed or they can listen to a series of short, algorithmically arranged audio clips on the News Feed. Photo: Axios – Podcasts: Facebook will build a tool that allows users to explore Podcasts content on Facebook. Facebook may partner with an external Podcasts app to implement this feature. Photo: Yahoo Live audio: Users can chat with audio on Facebook, and Mark Zuckerberg believes live chat audio can help Facebook improve the economics of content creators. Mark Zuckerberg has started experimenting with more sound platforms in recent times as the trend gets stronger. A few weeks ago, he announced a shopping-related partnership with Shopify on Clubhouse, the popular audio social network recently.