Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted early Wednesday that you can now buy a Tesla with bitcoin, the cryptocurrency. Despite the tweet coming at 3:02 a.m. EST, this seems a bit more premeditated than your typical late-night Twitter shenanigans.
I say that because Tesla has a support article up on its website that Google says was posted around the time of Musk’s tweet; there is also this PDF of bitcoin terms that Google says was posted around the same time as well.
Here are the relevant tweets:
And here is an excerpt from said support article:
How do I pay with Bitcoin?
Initiate payment from your Bitcoin wallet. You can either scan the QR code or copy and paste the Bitcoin address and the exact Bitcoin amount into your wallet.
What if I accidentally send the wrong amount?
If you did not send the exact amount due for your order deposit, your order may be cancelled. If you did not send the exact amount due for final amount due on your car, it may cause a delay in the delivery of your car.
[...]
What cryptocurrency does Tesla accept?
Bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency Tesla accepts.
What countries support Bitcoin payments?
We are only supporting Bitcoin for customers in the continental United States. We will consider expanding into new markets in the future.
What if I send a different cryptocurrency to the specified Bitcoin address?
We will not receive the transaction and it will likely result in a loss of funds for you.
Tesla said in February that it expected to accept bitcoin as payment at some point. The company had invested $1.5 billion in the cryptocurrency, so it’s not like this is a big surprise.
And there is probably a substantial number of people out there who will hear this news and it will make sense to them, either because they too are invested in bitcoin and operating in that world is not a foreign prospect or because they live in California and the word cryptocurrency is a part of their lingua franca.
Not me, however, as I still believe in the American dollar, though news like this always makes me feel like the kind of person who stuffs the mattresses with dollar bills, itself a cliche as I’m not sure those people still exist. Bitcoin is currently trading at around $56,600 per unit, up 4 percent today. A year ago a Bitcoin was worth a little over $6,700.
Which means that a single Bitcoin will get you at least a Model Y.