What happened
Shares of MicroStrategy Incorporated (MSTR +10.27%) popped this morning after Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted on Sunday that his electric car company is open to accepting Bitcoin (BTC +3.16%) if the mining technology becomes cleaner in the future.
At 10:49 a.m. EDT the tech stock was up by 14.8%.
So what
MicroStrategy is technically a software company, but its share price often rises and falls along with the price of Bitcoin because the company owns about $4 billion worth of the cryptocurrency.
Musk's recent Bitcoin comment comes after the billionaire said back in March that Tesla would accept Bitcoin as a source of payment for its vehicles, only to reverse that decision in May because of the "rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions."
Image source: Getty Images.
Now Musk again appears to have changed his decision about accepting Bitcoin, saying in a tweet yesterday, "When there's confirmation of reasonable (~50%) clean energy usage by miners with positive future trend, Tesla will resume allowing Bitcoin transactions."
Musk's tweets about cryptocurrencies often have a significant impact on their price, and the price of Bitcoin jumped about 10% after the tweet.
The spike in Bitcoin's price then helped MicroStrategy's share price pop as investors bought up more shares of the tech company.
Now what
MicroStrategy's share price has been volatile over the past few months: The price of Bitcoin has dropped about 36% over the past three months.
Investors should know that buying stock in MicroStrategy right now is essentially a bet on Bitcoin, and the company's share price is likely to continue rising and falling based on the price of the cryptocurrency.
