Cryptocurrency prices drop after Tesla says it will stop accepting Bitcoin

Cryptocurrency prices fell Thursday after Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the automaker will stop accepting Bitcoin as a form of payment.

As of Thursday morning, the prices of top cryptocurrencies -- bitcoins and ethers -- fell more than 10% over the last 24 hours, according to crypto market data site CoinGecko.

However, it appears both are recovering some of those losses. Ethereum, the system behind ethers, was back up by 2% over the last hour, while Bitcoin rose 0.8%.

Wednesday afternoon, Musk tweeted Tesla would no longer accept Bitcoin as payment over concerns with "the rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels" for mining and transactions.

"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," wrote Musk in his statement.

Last month, Bitcoin was coming off a record high topping $64,000, as interest in cryptocurrencies has surged. The hype even fueled a surge in Dogecoin, a form of cryptocurrency initially created to poke fun at digital coins.

Follow Brett Molina on Twitter: @brettmolina23.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Bitcoin: Cryptocurrency prices dip after Elon Musk statement