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Tesla CEO Elon Musk in Los Angeles.

zz/Wil R/STAR MAX/IPx Elon Musk, who has become a volatile force in the cryptocurrency universe, said Tesla is no longer accepting Bitcoin as payment for purchases of its electric vehicles owing to the excessive amount of carbon-based energy it uses. Bitcoin plunged following his comments.

“We are concerned about rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal, which has the worst emissions of any fuel,” Musk tweeted on Wednesday afternoon. “Cryptocurrency is a good idea on many levels and we believe it has a promising future, but this cannot come at great cost to the environment.”

While Tesla isn’t going to accept Bitcoin as payment, the company’s billionaire CEO said it also won’t be selling holdings in the cryptocurrency and still plans to use “it for transactions as soon as mining transitions to more sustainable energy.”

Bitcoin dropped 17% to $47,256.504 at 1:05 a.m. London time early Thursday.

Mining its uses “more electricity than Argentina” according to recent BBC report because it needs vast amounts of computing power to continuously log and verify all transaction data to the bitcoin blockchain.

The sudden move is a curious one since Tesla’s recent $1.5 billion Bitcoin investment triggered a surge in the currency’s value. It also helped the carmaker report a first-quarter project this year, owing to the $101 million gain it reported from selling 10% of its Bitcoin holdings. Musk has also made numerous comments that pumped up and undercut Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency that started as a joke.

The about-face on Bitcoin comes a day after Musk asked his followers on Twitter if Tesla should accept “Doge”–just days after he joked that the Shiba-Inu-themed cryptocurrency was a “hustle” during his appearance on Saturday Night Live.

Musk said the company is looking at other cryptocurrencies that “use “