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.
Information on the carmaker's website revealed the company will be using internal/open source software to conduct bitcoin transactions.
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.
Wall Street analysts said they were not expecting this to go live until the second half of the year.
“This is a seminal moment for Tesla and for the crypto world with Musk now cutting the red ribbon on Bitcoin transactions within the broader Tesla ecosystem,” said Dan Ives at broker Wedbush.
“We expect less than 5% of transactions to be through Bitcoin over the next 12 to 18 months however this could move higher over time as crypto acceptance starts to ramp over the coming years.
“In a nutshell, Tesla accepting bitcoin as a form of payment for its products/cars is a potential game changing move for the use of Bitcoin from a transactional perspective.”
Tesla shares were up 1% to $669.5 in pre-market trading on Wednesday.