This morning, on Wednesday 24 March, CEO of Tesla Motors Elon Musk announced in a tweet that “You can now buy a Tesla with Bitcoin.” Billionaire Musk further added that bitcoin would be accepted in the US and “will be retained as Bitcoin, not converted to fiat currency.” The option will be available outside the US later this year. Bitcoin was up 3 per cent against the dollar to $55,444.21 (BTC-USD) shortly after Musk’s tweet was posted. How would this work exactly?

You can now buy a Tesla with Bitcoin

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 24, 2021

Last month, the electric-car maker had said it bought $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin and would soon accept it as a form of payment for cars, sending the price of the world’s most popular cryptocurrency soaring. Musk, who has been promoting cryptocurrencies through his Twitter account, had last month criticised conventional cash, saying when it “has negative real interest, only a fool wouldn’t look elsewhere.”

According to Yahoo Finance, the investment had since drawn scrutiny over its environmental impact. But that didn’t stop Musk. Bitcoin has rallied more than 400 per cent over the last six months thanks to growing support from institutional investors and major tech players such as Tesla. Square, Jack Dorsey’s payments company, has invested over $200 million in the cryptocurrency. Uber and Twitter also shared their views on the cryptocurrency.

Uber’s Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi said the company discussed and “quickly dismissed” the idea of investing in bitcoin. However, he added that Uber could potentially accept the cryptocurrency as payment. And just in case if you haven’t bought bitcoin or any other crypto till now, The Money Mongers recently released the list of safe and easy-to-use crypto exchanges for the Australian region.

Twitter had said earlier it was still undecided in holding bitcoin, while General Motors said it will evaluate whether bitcoin can be accepted as payment for its vehicles.

The price surge has helped bitcoin repeatedly reach new all-time highs in recent months. Musk—who recently changed his official title at Tesla to “technoking”—has long been an advocate of digital currencies. As well as bitcoin, he has provided price support to meme crypto doge coin this year by tweeting about it.

In February 2021, Mastercard disclosed plans to support cryptocurrency payments across its network. Around the same time, it was reported that very soon, Google Pay and Samsung Pay would also accept payments made with bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. There are many more potential use cases for crypto, and we expect these to expand rapidly in the coming year.