After the ardent endorsement of cryptocurrency, Tesla chief Elon Musk has announced that the electric car can now be purchased with Bitcoin. The announcement makes Tesla, the first major carmaker to accept payments in cryptocurrency.
"You can now buy a Tesla with Bitcoin," Musk had tweeted. He added that Tesla is using only internal & open source software and operates bitcoin nodes directly. "Bitcoin paid to Tesla will be retained as Bitcoin, not converted to fiat currency." He also said that the facility to pay through bitcoin in other countries besides US will be available later this year.
Musk had earlier tweeted that Tesla had bought $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin. Tesla said in a filing the decision to move nearly 8 percent of its reserves into bitcoin was part of its broad investment policy as a company aimed at diversifying and maximizing its returns on cash, including holding gold.
The company had also said earlier that it would begin "accepting bitcoin as a form of payment for their products in the near future."
Musk, a strong supporter of Bitcoin, had also rallied for another cryptocurrency, Dogecoin that led to an all time price high of $0.065448, up about 35 percent from its 24-hour low of $0.048356, according to CoinDesk in early February.
However, the meme cryptocurrency's price later dropped again before climbing back to about 25 percent gain. Musk on February 14 said there is "too much concentration" among major Dogecoin holders, and said he will support them if they sell most of their coins.
Similarly, Bitcoin price also fell over 18 percent in a two-day sell-off which took the premier cryptocurrency below the $50,000-mark in February.
Following bitcoin's recent golden run, analysts have raised caution sign over the cryptocurrency as headwinds from the official sector still remain.
Musk has frequently tweeted about Bitcoin also, even recently adding "#Bitcoin" to his Twitter bio, which has now been deleted.
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