TL;DR Breakdown:
- Tesla now accepts payments in Bitcoin for its electric cars.
- The company plans to retain any Bitcoin paid to them instead of converting back to cash.
Popular electric car manufacturer, Tesla, has finally rolled out support for customers to purchase its products using the largest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin (BTC). Elon Musk, the CEO of the company, shared the new development on Twitter today, adding that they are planning to hold the Bitcoin rather than converting payments to fiat currency.
This is coming about a month after the company invested about $1.5 billion in Bitcoin as part of its balance sheet.
What this means for Tesla
Henceforth, Tesla users now have the option to purchase the companies fleet of electric cars, including the Model Y, Model S, Model X, etc., using the cryptocurrency. According to Elon Musk, the company is running its Bitcoin nodes directly. It’s also using only internal and open-source software for the BTC payment function.
Unlike most companies and businesses that accept BTC payments, “Bitcoin paid to Tesla will be retained as Bitcoin, not converted to fiat currency,” Musk wrote. This shows how much the company sees Bitcoin as a better store of value. It remains unknown whether the electric car company will support more digital currencies as an option to pay for its products.
Tesla Bitcoin reserve
The company previously revealed its intention to accept Bitcoin for its electric cars earlier in February, when it filed a 10-K report with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on its plan to allocate $1.5 billion of its cash reserve to the cryptocurrency. Precisely, the company netted about 48,000 BTC with that amount. These coins are currently worth over $2.6 billion in today’s price.
