Elon Musk Move Sends Bitcoin Soaring

Tesla invests $1.5B in cryptocurrency, may accept it as payment
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 8, 2021 9:40 AM CST
Elon Musk Move Sends Bitcoin Soaring
Tesla CEO Elon Musk is investing big in bitcoin.   (Hannibal Hanschke/Pool Photo via AP, File)

The world's richest person in terms of dollars just made a big splash in the world of cryptocurrency, too. Elon Musk's Tesla has invested $1.5 billion in bitcoin and says it plans to begin accepting it as a form of payment, reports MarketWatch. The move gave an instant jolt to the digital coin—it reached $44,000 on Monday morning, after hovering around $40,000 or below through most of Sunday. The investment was revealed in the company's latest annual report, which came out Monday, per the Wall Street Journal. "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, which we may or may not liquidate upon receipt," the filing states, per MarketWatch.

Last month, Musk gave an earlier boost to the cryptocurrency when he added "#bitcoin" to his Twitter bio. Other institutional investors, including PayPal, have embraced bitcoin in recent months as well, notes MarketWatch. Meanwhile, bitcoin isn't the only such currency Musk is boosting. His recent tweets about dogecoin—a currency that the Journal reports began in 2013 as a joke—have helped send prices to an all-time high of $0.08, reports CNBC. That may sound like small fry compared to bitcoin, but dogecoin now has a market value of $9.5 billion and is the No. 10 digital coin by the ranking of CoinMarketCap. And not too long ago, investors could buy bitcoin for pennies on the dollar as well. (Just ask the guy who spent 10,000 bitcoin on pizza in 2010.)

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