To buy a brand-new electric vehicle from US-based Tesla, now you can use cryptocurrency Bitcoin. Elon Musk has come out to declare on Twitter that the option to pay in Bitcoin is live; also, that the company will not convert Bitcoin to fiat currency.
In February 2021, Tesla invested $1.5 billion into Bitcoin. Now it has been revealed that the company will also commence accepting payments in Bitcoin. However, how and when this would be done, remained unknown.
Tesla reported in its SEC filing that it had invested $1.5 billion in Bitcoin; a sum, as the company claimed, that it did not immediate need for. In its filing, the electric car maker said that its investment in Bitcoin was intended to “maximise returns”.
Musk said that Tesla is using internal and open-source software. Plus, the company is operating Bitcoin nodes directly. Further, he said that Tesla won’t convert the Bitcoin it receives into fiat currency; which is interesting since the investment was made only out of excess cash reserves.
If enough Tesla customers switch to Bitcoin as a mode of payment; it could signal an important milestone for cryptocurrency as a mainstream payment mechanism.
Tesla is not the first company to convert a portion of its cash into cryptocurrency. Earlier in 2020, the US-based business intelligence company MicroStrategy purchased $250 million worth Bitcoin; and announced plans to raise $400 million more to buy more of the cryptocurrency.
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