Elon Musk has announced that Teslas can now be purchased with Bitcoin, one of the world's most popular cryptocurrencies.
Musk made the surprise announcement in a tweet this morning informing his 49.5m Twitter followers that “You can now buy a Tesla with Bitcoin” in the US – and that payment capability would be rolled out worldwide later this year.
CEO Musk clarified that Bitcoin payments will be kept as Bitcoin by Tesla and not traded into 'fiat' [government-controlled] currency.
Musk recently announced that Tesla had bought $1.5 billion (£1.05 billion) worth of the currency and that the American automaker would soon be accepting Bitcoin payments.
Bitcoin, like all cryptocurrencies, is notoriously volatile in price and therefore leaves the price actually paid – the real-world price – for a Tesla down to the rate the currency was originally bought at by the consumer.
Tesla's terms and conditions of sale state that if a refund is needed, it can pay in either the exact amount of Bitcoin paid or in US dollars based on the dollar price of the car – whichever the company wants.
So, hypothetically, if the price of Bitcoin goes up before a refund is issued, the customer could lose out.
Mr Musk also tweeted that Tesla planned to run its own internal software to handle prospective Bitcoin payments, which “operates Bitcoin nodes directly” – in reference to nodes which, in this instance, are the computers that process all Bitcoin transactions.
Bitcoin is currently trading at just over £41,000 per coin – up from the £5,600 it was worth on this date in 2020.
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