Tesla Invests $1.5B in Bitcoin, Will Start Accepting It As Payment...

by Taylor Telford

Tesla has invested $1.5 billion in bitcoin and plans to start accepting the cryptocurrency as payment “in the near future,” the electric-car maker said Monday in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

The move is a major sign of support for bitcoin and could encourage other major companies to follow suit in accepting the world’s most popular cryptocurrency. Bitcoin jumped after the Tesla announcement, hitting a new high before settling at $44,077.01 at 4 p.m. Monday. It is up more than 52 percent since the start of the year, according to CoinDesk.

Dan Ives, managing director of equity research at Wedbush Securities, called Tesla’s embrace of bitcoin a potentially “game-changing move.”

“This morning’s news formalizes the strategy of Musk and Tesla diving into the deep end of the pool of bitcoin and crypto,” Ives told the The Washington Post. “Ultimately, investors and other industry watchers will be watching this closely to see if other corporations follow the lead of Tesla on this crypto path.”

An HSB survey published in 2020 found that 36 percent of small and midsize American businesses accept cryptocurrency. Tesla will join big names such as Microsoft, Wikipedia and PayPal in accepting bitcoin worldwide.

Several digital currency exchanges, including Coinbase and Gemini, reported technical difficulties amid heavy trading after Tesla’s SEC filling news broke.

Tesla shares were up 1.3 percent at market close Monday. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tesla chief executive Elon Musk has been vocal in his enthusiasm for cryptocurrency in recent days. In an early-February interview on Clubhouse, the audio chat app, Musk called himself a bitcoin supporter and said he had been “late to the party.” He also briefly added #Bitcoin to his Twitter bio.

“Bitcoin is really on the verge of getting broad acceptance by conventional finance people,” Musk said in the interview…