The world’s leading electric car manufacturer is fully supporting the world’s most influential digital currency.
Editor’s note: This article is from the WeChat public account “Blockchain Camp” (ID:blockchain_camp), organized by: Carol Jin Zhaoyu.
Elon Musk, CEO and founder of Tesla and SpaceX, announced that Tesla will accept Bitcoin as a payment method on the official website. The world’s leading electric car manufacturer is fully supporting the world’s most influential digital currency.
On March 24, Elon Musk tweeted three in a row, announcing that the US market has accepted the use of Bitcoin to buy Tesla cars, and Musk also said that he would not convert the received Bitcoin into legal form. currency.
Tesla’s official website in the US shows that it currently only supports US customers using bitcoin for payment, but Musk said that in the future, other markets outside the US will be considered. As soon as the news came out, the price of Bitcoin immediately fluctuated and ushered in a slight increase, from around $54,800 before Musk’s launch to $55,400.
The production line turns into a miner, and the coin is “really fragrant”
At the same time, screenshots of the order appeared almost immediately on the social media platform. Although Tesla has not yet announced the bitcoin prices corresponding to different models, the domestic long-life version of Model Y is currently on sale, and the price is 347,900. yuan. If Bitcoin remains at the baseline of $55,000, then one Bitcoin can be exchanged for one Tesla. Tesla’s production line immediately became a super large mining machine.
Auto currency exchange is really worthy of Musk’s title of “the king of currency goods”. Musk has expressed his support for Bitcoin on social media more than once, and Musk’s tweets even once cited the prices of multiple digital currencies. Have a great impact. The specific situation can be seen in the previous article “Imitate Tesla?” Starting with 260 million cryptocurrencies, what is Mito like? “. Supporting Bitcoin Musk is not just talking about it. On February 8, Tesla announced the purchase of $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin. Subsequently, Bitcoin rose rapidly, breaking through the $40,000 mark, and until March, Bitcoin had risen. To around $55,000. From the perspective of the upward trend, the wealth brought by Tesla’s holding of Bitcoin has exceeded the profit from buying a car in 2020.
According to the 2020 earnings report released by TeslaIn the past year, Tesly delivered a total of 499,500 vehicles and achieved a net profit of US$721 million. The 1.5 billion US dollars of Bitcoin that Tesla bought in February has now risen to 2.43 billion US dollars, with a floating profit of approximately 930 million US dollars.
Allowing Bitcoin to directly buy Tesla can not only sell cars, but also “speculate coins”, which can be said to be “two birds with one stone” for Musk.
Is it really cost-effective to buy Tesla with Bitcoin?
Currently on the Tesla website in the United States, the option of paying for the car with Bitcoin is already visible. Tesla reminds customers that they can scan the QR code or copy and paste the location of their Bitcoin wallet to initiate the payment process. At the same time, Tesla reminded that if customers try to pay with other types of cryptocurrencies, Tesla will not accept the transaction and may even cause the customer to lose money.
As for how to deal with received bitcoins, Musk said, “Tesla is using internal open source software to directly operate bitcoin nodes” and will not convert the received bitcoin car payments into legal currency. According to the terms of Tesla’s Bitcoin payment contract, its car models will continue to be priced in U.S. dollars, and if customers want to pay for their cars in Bitcoin, they will pay the equivalent of Bitcoin. Tesla estimates that if the current deposit of $100 is paid, it will be equal to 0.00183659 bitcoins. According to Tesla’s refund policy, the company can choose to refund in U.S. dollars or Bitcoin. This may allow Tesla to benefit from the price fluctuations of Bitcoin or fiat currencies, and the amount returned to customers may be less than the purchase price at the time.
In the view of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS), there is not much difference between using Bitcoin for shopping and directly selling Bitcoin, and selling Bitcoin requires a capital gains tax. This will result in the use of Bitcoin to buy Tesla cars and the final cost may be much more expensive than buying with cash.
The Internal Revenue Service classifies Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as assets. Therefore, when investors sell bitcoins or convert them into physical goods, they must pay taxes on the value-added part. If an investor bought a bitcoin at a price of US$3,000 in March last year, and then uses that bitcoin to buy a Tesla car, then considering that the price of bitcoin has now exceeded US$50,000, the investor must report this amount Capital gains from transactions. According to estimates, unless the annual income is less than 40,000 US dollars, if you use Bitcoin to buy Tesla cars, you need to pay at least 15% tax.
Although Musk claimed that he would consider opening other markets to accept Bitcoin to buy Tesla in the future, this basically does not work in the Chinese market. Chinese law stipulates that Bitcoin does not have the same legal status as currency and cannot be circulated as currency. use. At the same time, financial institutions cannot provide customers with bitcoin registration, trading, clearing, and settlement services. If Tesla accepts Bitcoin to buy a car, it can only be collected. It cannot be converted into RMB through financial institutions, so it cannot be used externally for payment.Pay for goods, pay wages and pay taxes.
In this way, it is not feasible to open up bitcoin payment in the Chinese market. Moreover, the bitcoin market is treacherous. The bitcoin market rises and falls. Will the Tesla tied to it have a price for a while? Will the “leeks” be cut accidentally? We still need to wait and see.