Elon Musk says ‘You can now buy a Tesla with Bitcoin’ ๐จ This article is 4 years old...
Elon Musk says ‘You can now buy a Tesla with Bitcoin’
The Tesla CEO said individuals can buy the electric cars via Bitcoin in a tweet today.
2 min read
Updated: Mar. 24, 2021 at 9:41 am UTC
Cover art/illustration via CryptoSlate. Image includes combined content which may include AI-generated content.
You can now buy a Tesla with Bitcoin. You read that right and it’s not a rumor. It’s coming straight from the CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, himself.
In a tweet a few hours ago, the Tesla CEO said potential car owners can buy the world-famous electric vehicles using Bitcoin, the world’s largest digital currency.
You can now buy a Tesla with Bitcoin
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 24, 2021
Musk added that Tesla is using only internal and open source software and that it would operate its own Bitcoin nodes directly. As such, all the BTC paid by users to Tesla would be retained as Bitcoin, not converted to fiat currency as in other fiat-to-Bitcoin product purchases.
This means unlike most other purchases of real-world assets like real estate, watches, or yachts, Tesla will continue to hold the Bitcoin they receive on their books, instead of accepting BTC and cashing out to dollars (or other fiat currencies instantly).
Meanwhile, while the above is currently only available to US citizens, Musk said car buyers in other countries can soon purchase a shiny new Tesla using BTC. “Pay by Bitcoin capability available outside the US later this year,” he said in another tweet.
On the back of Tesla’s $1.5 billion purchase
Musk, who’s officially the ‘Technoking of Tesla’ at the car company, isn’t new to Bitcoin. He’s been making memes about the currency (and meme coin Dogecoin) for months and even oversaw Tesla’s mammoth purchase of Bitcoin for their own books.
As CryptoSlate reported last month, Tesla picked up over $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin in a move mirroring that of business analytics firm MicroStrategy (which is sitting on over 90,000 BTC as per records).
Tesla, as per a US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing, said it added Bitcoin to its treasury to safeguard against inflation and find returns in an outperforming, globally-accepted, and liquid asset class. The firm joined the cohort of tech firms like MicroStrategy and payments firm Square with the move, with the common narrative being that of finding better returns via Bitcoin alongsideย moving away from traditional assets.
It's official: people can buy a @Tesla with #Bitcoin. @elonmusk also claims that $TSLA will #hodl the received #BTC amount!
Which other car manufacturers will follow suit first? ? pic.twitter.com/syU4PC0YIG
— Delta Investment Tracker (@get_delta) March 24, 2021
Some users are seemingly urging Tesla to start accepting Dogecoin, one that Musk loves to joke about. And given the meme potential, that’s won’t be entirely surprising.
I wanna buy it with Dogecoin ?
— AUG | Lucas (@CreaTioN_o_0) March 24, 2021
Meanwhile, Bitcoin jumped to over $56,000 after Musk’s tweet. It’s now up over 6% in the past day.
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Bitcoin, a decentralized currency that defies the sway of central banks or administrators, transacts electronically, circumventing intermediaries via a peer-to-peer network.
South African-born Elon Musk has founded several companies, including X.com (which later became PayPal), SpaceX and Tesla Motors.