Elon Musk himself made the announcement: it is now possible to buy Tesla by paying in bitcoin.
You can now buy a Tesla with Bitcoin
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 24, 2021
He also provided some other very interesting details.
First of all, he explicitly stated that the BTC collected by Tesla will not be converted into fiat currency, but kept in bitcoin.
This means that it is the company’s intention to increase the amount of BTC held in reserves, in addition to those purchased at the beginning of February.
Musk also revealed that to process BTC payments, Tesla uses internal, open-source software that directly manages Bitcoin nodes.
For now, payments in BTC have only been activated for US customers, but by the end of the year, they will also be enabled for foreign customers.
It is possible to buy Tesla with bitcoin: reactions to the announcement
The price of bitcoin immediately reacted to the news, rising by 3% in just over half an hour, but without climbing back to the all-time highs of ten days ago.
With the significant increase in the value of bitcoin, which has multiplied almost sixfold in the last six months, there are many BTC holders who have a small fortune on their hands, especially if they had invested during last year’s crash, for example.
Exactly one year ago, the price dropped well below $6,000 and has since risen more than tenfold.
Among those who find themselves with this fortune might be a number of people tempted to spend some of their bitcoin on a Tesla car. Therefore, the company’s decision is not at all surprising, since it was already announced at the same time as the purchase of BTC.
Given that the company still holds large amounts of cash reserves in dollars, the decision not to sell any bitcoin cashed in from the sale of their products is also not surprising.
Now, as happened in February, it can be expected that other companies will follow Tesla’s example and start accepting direct payments in BTC.
