Mary Barra, who served as CEO of General Motors for seven years, said the company has no immediate plans to emulate Tesla’s Bitcoin purchase.
During GM’s fourth quarter 2020 earnings conference call today, Barra said the company would monitor demand from customers who want to pay for vehicles using Bitcoin (BTC), but did not intend to make a massive crypto purchase like Tesla yet.
“This is something that we are going to monitor and evaluate,” she said. “If there is a strong demand from customers for it in the future, there is nothing to stop us from doing that.
“We have no plans to invest in Bitcoin, so stop there.”
A US institution, General Motors has not always been at the forefront of innovation. The company discarded one of the first mass-produced electric vehicles, the EV1, in the early 2000s. Then-CEO Rick Wagoner later called this one of the worst decisions during his time at GM in terms of the company’s image.
However, the company is not fully disassociated from the blockchain ecosystem. GM currently holds several blockchain-based patents, including some for managing autonomous vehicle data and continuously updating a vehicle’s navigation map system. In addition, the company, along with other car manufacturers, launched the Mobility Open Blockchain initiative, a group that aims to improve transportation using blockchain technology.
In the wake of Tesla’s $ 1.5 billion Bitcoin acquisition this week, some executives at large companies were directly asked whether they would follow the automaker’s example and invest in crypto, or whether they would consider offering it for payments in the future. Although Twitter CFO Ned Segal said the technology company was exploring the possibility of paying its employees in BTC, few companies have yet suggested that they would follow suit.
GM’s market capitalization is about a tenth the size of Tesla’s $ 77.9 billion, although it had more than $ 36 billion in cash available in the third quarter of 2020 – enough to buy almost 800,000 BTC after it the price of the active crypto has dropped below $ 45,000 today.