After nearly two weeks of torment in which investors lost nearly a trillion dollars in value, the crypto market crept slightly higher on Tuesday. According to CoinGecko, the total market cap of all cryptos fell from $2.61 trillion on May 12 to $1.47 trillion on May 24, before rising to $1.77 trillion as of 6.30 p.m. IST Tuesday. After plunging below $32,500 on Sunday from nearly $58,000 on May 12, the price of Bitcoin climbed recovered to over $40,000 on Tuesday afternoon. Similarly, Ethereum bounced back from $1,853 on Sunday to $2,753 in the early hours of Tuesday. Dogecoin's price rose from 28 cents on Sunday to 38 cents on Tuesday, indicating that it is improving.

The marginal recovery in the crypto market followed a tweet by Tesla CEO Elon Musk and business analytics company MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor on meeting the Bitcoin miners in North America over sustainable and transparent crypto mining.

This came days after Musk had stressed the ‘insane’ amount of energy required for producing Bitcoin. Musk had also reiterated his call for a ‘Carbon tax’ (a fee imposed on the burning of coal, gas, and other carbon-based fuels) amid concerns around “rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal, which has the worst emissions of any fuel,” as per a statement tweeted by Musk on May 13. Musk had even announced that Tesla would stop accepting bitcoin in payment for its electric vehicles due to environmental concerns.

While cryptos continue to fluctuate, fund managers have been of the view that Bitcoin is a bubble. At least as per the April 2021 Global Fund Manager Survey by Bank of America, involving around 200 institutional, mutual, and hedge fund managers globally, 74 per cent respondents believed Bitcoin to be a bubble while only 16 per cent disagreed with the notion.