Elon Musk says Tesla can be bought with Bitcoin, a currency India may soon ban
Musk said that Bitcoin paid to Tesla will not be converted to fiat currency and will be retained as bitcoin. The move comes after Tesla’s $1.5 billion investment in cryptocurrency last month.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Wednesday announced that people can now buy a Tesla car with Bitcoin. He further said that Bitcoin paid to Tesla will not be converted to fiat currency and will be retained as bitcoin. Musk on Twitter wrote, “You can now buy a Tesla with Bitcoin.” He further noted, “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.”
The Tesla CEO’s announcement comes over a month after Tesla’s $1.5 billion investment in cryptocurrency. The investment news was confirmed by Tesla's 10-K report with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) .
We invested an aggregate of $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," the company had noted in a report.
Musk has mentioned cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Dogecoin in his tweets several times causing their value to surge in the past. Dogecoin, the meme-based cryptocurrency is now the 13th-largest cryptocurrency with a market cap of around $7.2 billion, according to Bloomberg. Musk in the past has noted that the future Mars economy could be based on cryptocurrency, such as bitcoin. He had also written "Mars economy will run on crypto,” in a reply to a tweet. Musk’s company SpaceX’s Mars program eventually aims to colonize the planet.
Meanwhile, the Indian government is looking at imposing a ban on cryptocurrency trading, mining, and investments in the country. This will include Bitcoin and other popular crypto-currencies. A bill for the same has already been proposed recently. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in the Rajya Sabha that a high-level Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC) has been constituted under the Chairmanship of Secretary (Economic Affairs) to study the issues related to virtual currencies and propose actions through which all private cryptocurrencies, except any virtual currencies issued by a state, will be prohibited in India.
Recently, Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das had said the apex bank has certain "major concerns" over the impact cryptocurrencies may have on the financial stability in the economy and has conveyed the same to the government. He said the RBI's plans to launch its own digital currency remained a "work in progress".