Elon Musk, fresh off having his exorbitant wealth criticized by Bernie Sanders and having his thoughts on extraterrestrialism questioned by Tom DeLonge, has announced that people in the U.S. can now buy a Tesla with Bitcoin.
Musk made the announcement early Wednesday, noting that the Pay by Bitcoin option will be also be available outside the U.S., albeit later this year.
“Tesla is using only internal [and] open source software [and] operates Bitcoin nodes directly,” Musk explained. “Bitcoin paid to Tesla will be retained as Bitcoin, not converted to fiat currency.”
The official Tesla site now boasts a Bitcoin support page, including a breakdown on how to use the currency to buy a car. Click here for more on that.
The Pay by Bitcoin announcement arrives a little over a month after an SEC filing revealed an update to Tesla’s investment policy, as well as an aggregate $1.5 billion Bitcoin investment. At the time, the company had also informed consumers that it would begin accepting Bitcoin as a form of payment “in the near future … initially on a limited basis.”
2020 and 2021 (so far) have seen a number of developments across Musk’s business presences, including both Tesla and SpaceX. Among them, notably, is the impending launch of the world’s first all-commercial mission to orbit.
On the Tesla front, Musk revealed back in December that he once reached out to Tim cook “during the darkest days” of the Model 3 program about the possibility of Apple—who’s now set to unveil their own vehicle as soon as 2024—acquiring the company for a tenth of its current value.
According to Musk, however, Cook ultimately declined any such meeting.
