On Wednesday (March 24), Tesla Co-Founder and CEO Elon Musk, currently the world’s second richest person, announced that the U.S. electric car maker is now accepting payments in Bitcoin.
On February 8, the world learned from Tesla’s latest annual report (Form 10-K) that the company had invested $1.5 billion in Bitcoin:
The relevant section of the annual report reads:
“We hold and may acquire digital assets that may be subject to volatile market prices, impairment and unique risks of loss.
“In January 2021, we updated our investment policy to provide us with more flexibility to further diversify and maximize returns on our cash that is not required to maintain adequate operating liquidity. As part of the policy, which was duly approved by the Audit Committee of our Board of Directors, we may invest a portion of such cash in certain alternative reserve assets including digital assets, gold bullion, gold exchange-traded funds and other assets as specified in the future.
“Thereafter, we invested an aggregate $1.50 billion in bitcoin under this policy and may acquire and hold digital assets from time to time or long-term. Moreover, we expect to begin accepting bitcoin as a form of payment for our products in the near future, subject to applicable laws and initially on a limited basis, which we may or may not liquidate upon receipt“
Well, a short time ago, Musk announced that Tesla had started accepting Bitcoin as a form of payment:
It is interesting that unlike most companies/organizations that accept Bitcoin payments (usually, with the help of crypto payment processor BitPay) Tesla intends to keep all the BTC it receives rather than convert them immediately to fiat currency.
Around one minute after posting the above two tweets, Musk added:
“Pay by Bitcoin capability available outside US later this year.“
Blockstream CSO Samson Mow posted this screenshot from a Tesla order screen showing Bitcoin as a payment option:
