Tesla, fresh off becoming just the sixth company with a market valuation of over one trillion dollars, has been a game changer for the auto industry and made fresh waves recently when in their third quarter earnings report they revisiting the possibility of once again accepting cryptocurrencies as payment.
By Andrew Senior
October 26th, 2021
October has been a record setting month for Tesla on multiple fronts. Hertz announced that they placed an order for 100,000 vehicles in a deal worth over $4.2 billion in revenue for Elon Musk’s company. The company’s stock had been on fjire, closing at a blistering hot $1,024.86 this past Monday, putting Tesla in the rarefied air of having a market valuation of over one trillion dollars. Last but by no means least, Tesla also put one foot back into the crypto pool by hinting that they could once again accept payments for products and services in cryptocurrencies.
Tesla’s third quarter earnings report had various items of interest, but the most eye catching of them all might have been one small excerpt the automaker released along with all their financial numbers. “We may in the future restart the practice of transacting in cryptocurrencies for our products and services.” With one small sentence, Tesla drew massive interest and speculation about just when the company, consistently on the forefront of utilizing technology on the frontiers of knowledge, would be open to transactions in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
Tesla made several other admissions in their earnings release in relation to Bitcoin specifically saying that in the nine months prior to September 30th that they had bought a total of $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin and discussed their short foray into accepting Bitcoin as payment during 2021;
“In addition, during the three months ended March 31, 2021, we accepted bitcoin as a payment for sales of certain of our products in specified regions, subject to applicable laws, and suspended this practice in May 2021”.
Musk has made statements in the past discussing the energy draws required to mine Bitcoin as being the main prohibitive factor in Tesla’s decision to halt their pilot program of accepting Bitcoin as payment. He has since said that Tesla would only accept Bitcoin for payment again if at least 50% of mining is done by utilizing clean energy sources.
The automaker clearly has eyes for cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin in general, viewing the new asset class as a “liquid alternative to cash”. By laying the groundwork to once again allow customers the freedom to use cryptocurrencies as payment, Tesla is once again positioning themselves at the forefront of innovation.
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