Tesla customers can now buy the car using Bitcoin, company chief Ellon Musk has announced.
Musk, a public campaigner for Bitcoin, took to social media to make the announcement.
“You can now buy a Tesla with Bitcoin,” tweeted Musk, who was officially made the “Technoking of Tesla” this month.
The announcement comes barely a month after the automaker revealed it had bought $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin and that it would soon start accepting the world’s most popular cryptocurrency as a form of payment.
You can now buy a Tesla with Bitcoin
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 24, 2021
Customers in the US can pay using Bitcoin in a few months while the rest of the world will have to wait a little longer.
In the US, orders for new Tesla cars can now be secured with the equivalent of a $100 deposit in Bitcoin. A support page on Tesla’s website explains how customers can pay for a Tesla using the digital currency. The company’s electric vehicles typically cost between $37,990 and $124,000 before tax.
Bicton normally fluctuates meaning the prices of the car will also keep changing. Musk also said that Tesla will be running its own internal software to handle Bitcoin payments which operates like Bitcoin nodes directly.
Nodes, in this sense, are the computers that process Bitcoin transactions.
Musk also wanted Tesla’s customers to know that the Bitcoins paid won’t be converted into any other form of modern paper currencies.
“Bitcoin paid to Tesla will be retained as Bitcoin, not converted to fiat [government-controlled] currency,” he said.
In their refund policy, Tesla explains that in case of a refund, the company will refund customers in U.S. dollars at the exact price bitcoin was worth at the time of purchase.
This would ostensibly allow Tesla to benefit from price swings in the cryptocurrency or fiat currency, and leave customers with less than what they may have been entitled to with a refund based on a straight U.S. dollar transaction.
“This is a seminal moment for Tesla and for the crypto world with Musk now cutting the red ribbon on Bitcoin transactions within he broader Tesla ecosystem,” said Daniel Ives, an analyst at Wedbush.
“We expect less than 5% of transactions to be through bitcoin over the next 12 to 18 months however this could move higher over time as crypto acceptance starts to ramp over the coming years.”
