Want to buy your next bitcoin car? What about your next cup of coffee?
Elon Musk, a longtime advocate for bitcoin, will soon offer Tesla Inc. customers. the chance to buy the company’s electric vehicles using digital currency. The news – along with Tesla’s bid to buy a $ 1.5 billion cryptocurrency for its corporate treasury – sent the price of bitcoin up 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 booming digital currency.
Despite having crossed paths with investors, bitcoin has slowed to take off as a form of payment. It was originally created in 2008 to function as an electronic version of cash, allowing two people from anywhere in the world to digitally exchange value, as if they had physically exchanged cash.
In practice, it didn’t work that way. The cost of using bitcoin and its volatility have made normal, day-to-day transactions impractical. This is unlikely to change with Tesla’s acceptance of the currency.