Want to buy your next bitcoin car? How about your next cup of coffee?
Elon Musk, a longtime advocate of bitcoin, will soon give Tesla Inc. customers a chance to buy the company’s electric vehicles using digital currency. The news – along with Tesla’s decision to acquire $ 1.5 billion in cryptocurrency for its corporate treasure – caused the price of bitcoin to rise 25% on Sunday, to a new intraday record of $ 48,226 on Tuesday .
For bitcoin bulls, the announcement was the latest sign of validation for the burgeoning digital currency.
Despite winning investors, bitcoin was slow to take off as a form of payment. It was originally created in 2008 to operate as an electronic version of money, allowing two people anywhere in the world to exchange value digitally as if they were physically exchanging money.
In practice, it didn’t work that way. The cost of using bitcoin and its volatility made normal day-to-day transactions impractical. This is not likely to change with Tesla’s acceptance of the currency.