Will Other Carmakers Follow Tesla’s Bitcoin Payment Lead?

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Yesterday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk once again grabbed headlines with a simple tweet. Whereas in 2020 that role was considered to be President Donald Trump’s, this year it’s been mostly Elon Musk’s role as the newest Twitter news maker.

He has spoken in the past about how Tesla would invest directly in Bitcoin, how much he’s a fan of Dogecoin and was about to sell an NFT about NFT. This time round, he informed worldwide audiences that you can now buy a Tesla with Bitcoin.

You can now buy a Tesla with Bitcoin

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 24, 2021

Not converted to fiat currency

Elon continued by saying that:

Tesla is using only internal & open source software & operates Bitcoin nodes directly.

Highly important, he also noted that the company would be storing the Bitcoins rather than converting them into dollars, euros or renmibi, depending on where the car is sold. Musk, who now calls himself the Technoking of Tesla on Twitter said:

Bitcoin paid to Tesla will be retained as Bitcoin, not converted to fiat currency.

So, you could say that Elon is investing in Bitcoin by selling Tesla cars.

Powell: crypto not particularly in use as a means of payment.

Elon: You can now buy a Tesla with Bitcoin https://t.co/MhhANRSEGG

— Alex Krüger (@krugermacro) March 24, 2021

Cryptofan Alex Krüger noted mockingly that Musk’s comment comes only days after Fed Chairman Powell had remarked that crypto is not particularly in use as a means of payment.

Ford And Chevrolet

Given that Musk is about to storm the US market with his long expected cybertruck and knowing that Americans have a love affair with SUVs and trucks, it will be interesting to see whether his competitors. Like Chevrolet (who sells the Bolt EUV as a compact SUV) and Ford (who sells the highly popular Mustang Mach-E) will follow suit and accept crypto as payment for cars.

In February only, Tesla faced stiff competition from Ford, when estimations noted that Tesla’s market share of the EV market in the US had dropped from 81% in February of 2020 to 69% because of the popularity of the Mustang Mach-E.

As electric vehicles attract ever younger buyers as well (and certainly the generations who are more interested in crypto), the mass car market might be a way for crypto attain mass adoption.

bettorodrigues / Depositphotos.com