Tesla will now accept bitcoin as payment for electric vehicles, says Elon Musk

Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) will now accept bitcoin as payment for electric vehicles, according to Elon Musk’s twitter account. Musk in a trio of tweets announced the new policy for sales in the United States. It is the latest in piece of social media from Musk to promote crypto-currency. Tesla is using only internal & open source software & operates Bitcoin nodes directly. Bitcoin paid to Tesla will be retained as Bitcoin, not converted to fiat currency. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 24, 2021 The Tesla chief executive added that it intends to allow bitcoin payment as an option in territories outside the United States later this year. Musk and Tesla’s involvement in bitcoin was recently brought into question as a so-called flash crash damaged the value of the company’s holding in the cryptocurrency. In February, a sharp drop in the bitcoin price was accompanied by a drop in the share price of the electric car maker. Tesla had previously unveiled a US$1.5bn investment in Bitcoin in early February.