Having stunned the market with its audacious bet on bitcoin earlier this year, Tesla will now start accepting the world’s largest electronic currency as payment for its electric cars.
Read: Bitcoin surges to almost $45 000 after Tesla discloses purchase
Chief executive officer Elon Musk on Wednesday tweeted that “you can now buy a Tesla with bitcoin” and that paying by bitcoin will also be available to customers outside the US later this year. He added that Tesla will only use internal and open-source software and that any bitcoin paid to the company will be retained as bitcoin and not converted to a fiat currency.
Tesla is using only internal & open source software & operates Bitcoin nodes directly.
Bitcoin paid to Tesla will be retained as Bitcoin, not converted to fiat currency.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 24, 2021
California-based Tesla disclosed its $1.5 billion investment in bitcoin in February and signalled its intent to begin accepting the cryptocurrency as a form of payment at the time, sending prices to a record. The world’s leading EV maker made the bitcoin bet after updating its investment policy in January to allow it to buy digital assets.
In addition to lending increased legitimacy to electronic currencies, Musk’s embrace of bitcoin fits his maverick image. The billionaire has often tweeted about cryptocurrency-related topics and recently called bitcoin “a good thing” in an interview. Dogecoin, the once tongue-in-cheek digital currency, also soared to records in February after Musk, rapper Snoop Dogg and Kiss bassist Gene Simmons tweeted about it.
© 2021 Bloomberg
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watch this space as a whole bunch of people commit tax fraud when they convert their btc to a Tesla and forget to tell the IRS of the capital gain.
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I don’t think the US Fed will appreciate Musk using a parallel currency to the USD. Watch this space.
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Japie you remind me of the spectators watching a rugby game. Full of perceived wisdom. Best players are always sitting on the side line.
However, you are clearly not alone as people has been saying this for at least 10 years along with Bitcoin’s existence. But they were clearly wrong as bitcoin has not collapsed yet and many of the early investors are now millionaires. My investment is also up more than 700%. I don’t think it will disappear and I don’t think the next buyer is stupid either. What I do think is that you may be the stupid one year simply if one just look at the stats. Simply google bitcoin’s price trend and make let me know what you think.
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I was reading earlier today that Paypal now accept 4 different cryptos and that there are 29,000,000 merchants worldwide who you can use it with. Utility is beginning to take off.
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Well obviously a currency is only a currency when you can actually use it to pay for something and Tesla stands to gain much if Bitcoin becomes a mainstream means of payment. Until then… Bitcoin speculators will have to keep looking for buyers even more stupid than themselves to sell it on to.
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