Tesla cars can now be bought with bitcoin, according to Elon Musk.
Tesla's CEO and co-founder, Elon Musk, has confirmed that consumers will soon be able to buy electric cars with bitcoin.
The 49-year-old billionaire announced the news in a tweet early Wednesday morning, adding that the option will be available “later this year” outside of the United States.
Musk tweeted, "Tesla is using only internal and open source tools and runs Bitcoin nodes directly." “Bitcoins charged to Tesla will be held as Bitcoins and will not be exchanged for fiat currency.”
According to Reuters, most businesses that accept bitcoin payments, such as AT&T and Microsoft, use specialized payment processors to convert the cryptocurrency into dollars, which are then sent to the business. When a customer pays for a Tesla, however, the bitcoin would definitely be added to the company's stockpile rather than being converted into fiat currency, according to Musk.
Electric vehicles from the company normally cost between $37,990 and $124,000 before taxes.
In February, Tesla made headlines when it announced that it had purchased $1.5 billion in bitcoin and would soon begin accepting the world's most famous cryptocurrency as a form of payment. The transition is a big step forward for the mainstream adoption of cryptocurrency.
Given its uncertainty and relatively expensive and long transaction times, bitcoin, like most other types of digital payments, is very seldom used for commerce in major economies.
Only bitcoin is allowed, according to a support page on Tesla's website, and attempting to send another cryptocurrency means the platform "will not receive the transaction and it will possibly result in a loss of funds for you."