PALO ALTO, California — Tesla Inc. has invested $1.5 billion in Bitcoin and expects to start accepting the cryptocurrency as payment, Bloomberg News reports.
“We expect to begin accepting Bitcoin as a form of payment for our products in the near future, subject to applicable laws and initially on a limited basis,” Tesla said in the securities filing.
Tesla, the electric-car market leader said in a filing Monday that it made the bet on Bitcoin after updating its investment policy last month to allow the company to invest in digital assets as well as gold bullion and gold exchange-traded funds.
Elon Musk, Chief Executive at Tesla and SpaceX, drove the price of Dogecoin cryptocurrency by as much as 35% higher with a series of tweets late Saturday.
The future currency of Earth
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 6, 2021
The people have spoken … https://t.co/x41oVMzTGo
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 8, 2021
Year-to-date returns on the cryptocurrency were about 1,032.91%, the site said. The cryptocurrency had a market capitalization of about $7.81 billion early Sunday.
On Monday at 8:06am, Bitcoin price rose as much as 13% to an all-time high of $43,725.51 on the news. It was up about 10% at $42,620 in New York.
