Story at a glance
- “You can now buy a Tesla with Bitcoin,” Musk tweeted Wednesday.
- Musk said bitcoin paid to Tesla will not be converted into traditional currency but retained as bitcoin.
- The announcement prompted bitcoin shares to rise as much as 5 percent early Wednesday.
Electric-vehicle maker Tesla now accepts bitcoin as a form of payment for its cars in the U.S.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk made the announcement via Twitter early Wednesday, saying that the option would be available outside the U.S. later in the year.
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“You can now buy a Tesla with Bitcoin,” Musk tweeted.
“Tesla is using only internal & open source software & operates Bitcoin nodes directly,” he added.
Musk said bitcoin paid to Tesla will not be converted into traditional currency but retained as bitcoin.
The option to pay using the cryptocurrency now appears on the company’s U.S. website alongside the traditional card payment option. A support page on Tesla’s website explains how customers can pay using the digital currency.
The announcement prompted bitcoin shares to rise as much as 5 percent early Wednesday.
Last month, Tesla said it purchased $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin and revealed that it would soon accept the cryptocurrency as a payment.
Bitcoin prices have surged in the past year as large companies and banks have started dabbling in cryptocurrencies, but the currency still is not widely used to pay for goods and services. The price of bitcoins, however, increased to more than $61,000 each earlier this month as investors try to profit off the digital currency’s growing popularity.
On Monday, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell warned of the risks associated with cryptocurrencies, saying they’re “highly volatile” and therefore “not really useful as a store of value and they’re not backed by anything.”
He said crypto assets are more used for “speculation” rather than means of payment.
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