March 24 (UPI) — Tesla Motors founder Elon Musk says people in the United States can now use bitcoin to buy the automaker’s electric vehicles.
Musk tweeted Tuesday that Tesla is adding the option immediately for domestic sales. Customers outside the United States will be able to pay with the cryptocurrency later this year.
“Tesla is using only internal and open source software and operates bitcoin nodes directly,” Musk tweeted.
“This is a seminal moment for Tesla and for the crypto world,” Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, told CNN. “We expect less than 5% of transactions to be through Bitcoin over the next 12 to 18 months. However, this could move higher over time.”
Coindesk reported Wednesday that bitcoin’s value is about $56,000 per coin, up from $54,700 at the time of Musk’s Twitter post.
Tesla said last month it bought $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin. At the time, it said the company would soon begin accepting the cryptocurrency as payment for some products.
