Kelly Slater takes aim at Tesla boss Elon Musk after bitcoin bombshell

American surfing icon Kelly Slater has blasted Elon Musk after the billionaire Tesla owner rocked the cryptocurrency market last week.

American surfing icon Kelly Slater has condemned Elon Musk after the Tesla owner ramped up his dispute with bitcoin this week.

On Monday morning, Slater blasted the Tesla owner on his Instagram Story, claiming Musk’s involvement has been “bad for crypto.”

“Elon Musk and Tesla Motors proudly bought $1.5B worth of Bitcoin for around $34K in Feb. Elon comes out this week and says BTC mining is bad for the environment and they dump their bitcoin for an estimated $804M in profits (but he’s still pushing dogecoin, a useless s***coin),” Slater wrote.

“So a guy who owns an energy company doesn’t understand this stuff before he buys it? Has no problem taking the profits. Does he have an issue with kids mining cobalt in the Democratic Republic of Congo to build batteries?

“He could probably address and potentially help solve the real energy issues (68 per cent of the energy produced in the US, for instance, is wasted … seems like a bigger issue to me which would solve any BTC problem).

“I think Elon’s board and backers hate crypto and what it’s doing for the average investor and pressured him to put out a statement which they knew would inevitably tank bitcoin. I hope the SEC is taking a good look at this (and all of them who might be buying the dip today and this week in their private accounts).

“Interesting times. But Elon is bad for crypto.”

Tesla chief executive Elon Musk.

Bitcoin medals.

Musk rocked the cryptocurrency market when he posted a statement that Tesla would suspend vehicle purchases using bitcoin.

“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,” the statement read.

“Tesla will not be selling any bitcoin and we intend to use it for transactions as soon as mining transitions to more sustainable energy.

“We are also looking at other cryptocurrencies that use (less than 1 per cent) of bitcoin’s energy/transaction.”

It came after Musk announced in February that Tesla would invest $1.95 billion in the cryptocurrency.

The 49-year-old has since cryptically hinted that Tesla might dump its holdings of the cryptocurrency.

The price of bitcoin has dived dramatically since Musk’s announcement last week, falling from $76,335 to $57,047.

Kelly Slater's Instagram story.

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RELATED: Solution to bitcoin’s biggest problem

Bitcoin mining uses vast amounts of energy to power specialised computers solving complex but useless mathematical problems.

Some studies suggest bitcoin production uses more electricity than the whole of Argentina, Poland, Norway or Switzerland. But even the lower estimates are that it results in more carbon emissions than Estonia.