Elon Musk announced that Tesla vehicles can now also be bought with Bitcoin. The CEO and self-proclaimed ‘technoking’ of electric cars said that the company will operate Bitcoin nodes directly. However, BTC income from car sales shouldn’t be converted into fiat money.
Buying a Tesla Car with BTC Is Now Becoming a Reality
The currently richest man in the world Elon Musk tweeted that it’s now possible to buy a Tesla with Bitcoin. The only drawback is that to date, only customers in the United States have this payment option. At the beginning of February, the electric car company signaled its intention to accept the digital currency for its products. That announcement coincided with the SEC filing when Tesla purchased $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin.
In the near future, all users who access the Tesla website with a US IP address will find a new ‘Bitcoin’ payment button, which can be selected during the payment process. This option is expected to be available to potential buyers outside the United States later this year.
By operating its own special Bitcoin nodes, Tesla joins a global network of peer-to-peer operators that host and synchronize the Bitcoin blockchain. This means that Tesla can process BTC payments directly.
Did Elon Musk’s message trigger a price jump? So far it’s not clear whether Elon Musk’s tweet caused Bitcoin price to increase. However, at the time of the announcement, Bitcoin was able to gain around 2.9 percent and increased in price from $54,056 to $55,630.
Tesla & Bitcoin Remain a Controversial Topic
Regardless of whether Tesla now accepts payments in BTC, discussions about the two remain quite controversial. As you scroll through the thousands of reactions to Elon Musk’s tweet, a wide variety of comments for or against Tesla’s Bitcoin adaptation take place.
A large number of Twitter users welcomed the new payment option. Although they probably neither have enough BTC to buy a Tesla nor even want one at all.
Still, others continually point to the total contrast between Tesla’s mission and Bitcoin’s unsustainable power consumption. The electric car manufacturer wants to accelerate the transition to the use of sustainable and renewable energy.
The use of Bitcoin, on the other hand, consumes an estimated 136 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity per year, at least according to the forecast for 2021. Last year, the annual electricity consumption of Bitcoin was 119 TWh. That is far more electricity than the whole of the Netherlands had consumed in the same period.
Still Not a Useful Currency
Ultimately, the question arises as to whether Bitcoin was even intended to be a currency in the traditional sense. Because this point of view was the most frequent one among Twitter followers of Mr. Tesla.
I don’t think that someone is about to spend his\her BTCs on buying a Tesla. The oldest cryptocurrency has now become far too valuable. And Bitcoin has developed into an investment object but not into a currency for everyday needs. You may remember the story of the guys who paid 10,000 BTCs for a pizza in 2010. Nobody would want to go down in history as the person who bought a Tesla for a million US dollars.
On the other hand, the confidence in the very first cryptocurrency has been strengthened. In addition, other companies will follow suit soon for fear of losing sales. In the medium term, this will mean that more and more institutions will jump on the Bitcoins bandwagon thus making BTC value increase.
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