Month: March 2024

King Charles III will not feature on Australia’s new five dollar note, the country’s central bank has announced.

The new design will pay tribute to “the culture and history” of Indigenous Australians, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) says.

A portrait of the late Queen Elizabeth II appears on the current design of the five-dollar note.

The Queen’s death last year reignited debates about Australia’s future as a constitutional monarchy.

“This decision by the Reserve Bank Board follows consultation with the Australian government, which supports this change,” the bank said in a statement.

“The Bank will consult with First Australians in designing the $5 banknote. The new banknote will take a number of years to be designed and printed. In the meantime, the current $5 banknote will continue to be issued. It will be able to be used even after the new banknote is issued,” it added.

The A$5 banknote is the only Australian banknote to carry the image of a British monarch. The late Queen appears on the country’s coins as well, although Australia is transitioning to using an effigy of King Charles III.

The RBA told the BBC it has not yet set a date for when it will reveal the new five-dollar note design.

The decision was welcomed by Aboriginal politicians and community leaders.

“This is a massive win for the grassroots, First Nations people who have been fighting to decolonize this country,” said Lidia Thorpe, a Greens senator and DjabWurrung Gunnai Gunditjmara woman.

First Nations people lived in Australia for at least 65,000 years before British colonization, according to recent estimates.

The King became the British monarch after his mother’s death in September.

As the British monarch, he is also the head of state of Australia, New Zealand, and 12 other Commonwealth realms outside the United Kingdom. The role is largely ceremonial.

The British monarch’s portrait has appeared on at least one design in every series of Australian banknotes.

However, in September Australia said the image of the new monarch would not automatically replace the Queen on its five-dollar notes, and that she might be replaced by Australian figures.

Tesla made a $140m (£113.5m) loss on its Bitcoin investments in 2022, according to filings.

The electric car maker told the US regulator it lost $204m on Bitcoin overall, though it gained back $64m through trading.

Tesla put $1.5bn into Bitcoin in early 2021, with chief executive Elon Musk saying it would be accepted as payment.

It changed course a few weeks later, and Tesla has since sold most of its Bitcoin holdings.

It now holds about $184m of Bitcoin.

Mr Musk has been among the most high-profile champions of cryptocurrency, with his pronouncements on social media often driving significant trading activity.

Tesla’s February 2021 Bitcoin purchase caused the cryptocurrency to rise in price by more than 25% to $48,000 – a record high at the time.

It rose again in March 2021, when Mr Musk tweeted Tesla would allow customers to make their car purchases using Bitcoin. This enabled people in the US to secure orders with the equivalent of a $100 deposit in Bitcoin.

But the cryptocurrency subsequently fell by more than 10% two months later, when the firm backpedaled on this plan, citing climate change concerns.

According to the UK Treasury, Bitcoin’s global annual energy consumption is estimated to be roughly 39% of the UK’s – and some estimates put the cryptocurrency’s even higher.

Its price soared to almost $70,000 in November 2022 before crashing by more than 50% when Tesla decided to offload most of its holdings.