Tesla CEO Elon Musk has just announced on Twitter that his world-leading Silicon Valley-based electric car company has started accepting Bitcoin (BTC) as a payment method. “You can now buy a Tesla with Bitcoin,” he tweeted just minutes ago.
He further went on explaining how Tesla will be keeping and process Bitcoin payments in another tweet:
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 on Twitter
The payment method is now available for buyers from the United States. When I checked the Tesla US website from outside the United States, the Bitcoin payment method did not appear, thanks to the Tesla Community friends on Twitter who cross-checked and evaluated that you have to be logged in from a US location/IP address to have the BTC available as a payment method.
Musk has also updated that Bitcoin will be available as a payment method for Tesla customers outside the US later this year.
The new payment method is now available for all Tesla cars purchased from within the United States. As of this writing, for the $100 non-refundable order placement fee, Tesla’s estimated conversion is 0.00183659 BTC.
Tesla’s entire lineup i.e. Model 3, Model Y, Model S, and Model X, additionally the pre-order fee for the Cybertruck is now payable in Bitcoin.
As Elon Musk has mentioned in his tweet, Tesla will not convert payments made in Bitcoin to conventional US dollars and will not be keeping it in a bank, it will add to the $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin that Tesla had purchased earlier this year.
The $1.5 billion investment by Tesla (TSLA) in Bitcoin (BTC) has already been a profitable decision for the company as BTC price has surged more than 60% since January. This might be the reason for Elon Musk assuming his title at Tesla as Technoking and CFO Zach as Master of Coin.
Today, Tesla has also become the world’s first automotive company that accepts Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency as a payment method. This is a huge step up by Tesla and is likely to result in another Bitcoin price hike rally — ultimately, the beneficiary of which will be Tesla (TSLA).
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