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Tesla cars can be bought in Bitcoin
- dforrestwilson 6y agoWhat is the use case here? Why deal with the cap gains taxes associated with this?
- johndevor 6y agoI mean a lot of people will probably have to sell assets to buy a Tesla anyway.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- nikanj 6y agoMayhaps you have crypto funds that you've forgotten to report as income. Being able to get a brand-new car without having to involve IRS is a neat way to commit tax fraud.
- o_p 6y agoAww, poor IRS, it cannot steal our money anymore
- buildbuildbuild 6y agoThis is not accurate. Tesla is obligated to file IRS Form 8300 for all Bitcoin purchases over $10,000.
- bryanrasmussen 6y agowouldn't Tesla report the transaction?
- xiphias2 6y agoThe other option is to borrow USD against BTC to buy a Tesla (I just did that yesterday), but if loan-to-value goes over 80%, the companies will liquidate my BTC automatically. I'm just doing this because I'm speculating that we're just at the start of the next bubble in the cycle.
- wyck 6y agoLike all things bitcoin it's easy. It's a lot easier to press a button on your phone and transfer 100k then it is to go through the pains of a bank transfer or any other payment method. I know hacker news is American centric but not all counties have the same cap gains taxes, plus you have to actually have a gain to pay taxes and these are all sorts of ways to mitigate this.
- camjohnson26 6y agoFor now they’re only accepting bitcoin payments in America.
- TheDudeMan 6y agoLots of publicity from this. They will always be the first to have done this.
- TearsInTheRain 6y agoDo you keep enough money to buy a tesla lying around in straight cash?
- xkeysc0re 6y agoWonder how much the environmental cost of BTC transactions and mining offsets any positive "green points" from using an EV
- diegocg 6y agoAbout 1/3 apparently https://medium.com/crypto-lucid/buying-a-tesla-in-bitcoins-cancels-4-times-the-co2-savings-for-its-whole-lifetime-c28b042e3b9a https://medium.com/crypto-lucid/buying-a-tesla-in-bitcoins-c...
- gus_massa 6y agoThe 1/3 assume that the bitcoins are never going to be used again, that is a very bad assumption. Let's be very conservative and assume they will be used once per year for the next 10 years, so instead of the 20+6=26 tons of CO2 you get 20/10+6=8 tons of CO2. (And you get a bigger reduction if you assume more more exchange velocity or that bitcoins will be around for more time.) Also, the 6 tons use the coefficient assume a 1% fee but with a $40,000 transaction, you don't have to pay a $400 fee. Probably $15, but let's be pessimistic and assume $40. So 20/10+6/10=2.6 tons of CO2, i.e. like 1/30 instead of 1/3. (Being more optimistic, I think it can be reduced to 20/100+6/30=.4 tons of CO2, i.e 1/200 of the savings.)
- o_p 6y agoThe transaction energy cost to buy the car is tiny to even be considered. The trip to the dealership you make to buy your car with fiat money probably takes far more energy.
- iamgopal 6y agoWhich is sadly not the case.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- delaaxe 6y agoBitcoin mining is good for the environment, that's why Tesla put $1b BTC on their balance sheet Edit: fine, downvote me but read this: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/axeldelamarre/files/master/Bitcoin%20Mining%20Is%20Good%20For%20The%20Environment%20-%20The%20Pomp%20Letter.pdf https://raw.githubusercontent.com/axeldelamarre/files/master...
- trjordan 6y ago> Tesla's terms and conditions say if a refund is needed, it can pay in either the exact amount of Bitcoin paid or in US dollars based on the dollar price of the car - whichever it wants. Fascinating.
- AndrewDucker 6y agoNow there's an excellent way to make money. (Value goes up, get refund in bitcoin and buy car in dollars. Value goes down, get refund in dollars.)
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y agoI think you misunderstood. Based on the wording it would seem that Tesla gets to choose how to refund you. So if BTC goes up your refund will be the dollar value of the car, if it goes down you'll get BTC back.
- chii 6y agoi think the choice lies with tesla, not the customer!
- throwaway4good 6y agoWhy would anyone then pay in bitcoin?
- UncleMeat 6y agoMemes. There is a sizable portion of people who have made oodles of money on cryptocurrencies and spending it for the story has become valuable. It is the "I am rich" effect but for a different audience.
- throwaway4good 6y agoThe marketing angle makes sense. But it also risky. If the there is a major correction in the price of bitcoin, then Tesla is not going look so good. However the refund policy is an explicit loss to the customer. You would have to be silly to accept that.
- nikanj 6y agoIs the price denominated in USD or in Bitcoin? The USD price for a Tesla tends to remain constant for relatively long stretches of time, I wonder if they're willing to commit to the BTC price staying put for similar amounts of time
- samvher 6y agoWouldn't that just result in everyone buying with the currency in which the car is the cheapest at that point in time? Seems like a guaranteed loss on Tesla's end.
- samvher 6y ago> Mr Musk said: "Bitcoin paid to Tesla will be retained as Bitcoin, not converted to fiat [government-controlled] currency" Bitcoin enthusiasts are very excited about this (e.g. on /r/CryptoCurrency)
- Nursie 6y agoI imagine so, there have been relatively few instances in which merchants were interested in selling directly for bitcoin, rather than using an intermediary to process the amount straight to a national currency.
- anddddd1 6y agoCoinbase is already running out of bitcoin to sell.
- chii 6y agoi guess i will eat my words - i thought that tesla would never actually accept bitcoins directly. I stand corrected.
- purple_ferret 6y agoI'm sure Elon Musk is not fond of having to go through Coinbase to buy bitcoin. He seems to have a disdain for financial middlemen and any tech leader not named Elon Musk. This allows for bitcoin to be put directly into Tesla's wallet with no cost to them.
- camjohnson26 6y agoMassively raises the risk of a hack or internal theft though.
- WinstonSmith84 6y agoplease explain how this shall be orchestrated on a multi-sig wallet, it's not like they do not already have more than 1.5 billions worth of USD already...
- meddlepal 6y agoHard to imagine anyone but Bitcoin true believers doing this. It’s basically throwing money away if BTC continues going up
- akmarinov 6y agoThey won't be converting BTC purchases to fiat currency, so no throwing away of money.
- toomuchredbull 6y agoBitcoin true believers are the ones who wouldn't do this because they believe it will keep going up.
- BoorishBears 6y agoWhy? Don't true believers believe BTC has use besides being an unregulated speculative vehicle? So they'd love the normalization of buying something as major as a car with it? Or are we just admitting that pretense is gone with the wind and now "true believer" refers to the HODL crowd?
- meddlepal 6y agoBTC true believers believe its a currency not a speculative asset you hold and it magically appreciates in value.
- alwillis 6y agoIt's not magic: Bitcoin is a non-sovereign, hard-capped supply, global, immutable, decentralized digital store of value. It’s an insurance policy against monetary and fiscal policy irresponsibility from central banks and governments globally. — @Travis_Kling
- purple_ferret 6y agoWhy, then, would you buy a tesla and not bitcoin? A car only depreciates in value.
- Gravityloss 6y agoI'm not familiar with cryptocurrencies, but why not some other alternative with far less resource usage?
- alwillis 6y agoBecause Bitcoin has a market cap of around $1 trillion dollars and it the only cryptocurrency that has a chance to be a global reserve currency.
- klmadfejno 6y agoI've often said that the US government can, and will, outlaw crypto if it starts to feel threatened. It may not absolutely stop transactions, but the value of the coin will plummet tremendously if this happens. However... if a sufficient scale of corporate interests stand to lose billions of dollars from the coin plummeting in value due to legal action I might rethink the viability of doing such a move politically.
- kruxigt 6y agoThat's exactly why I got enough confidence to finally make a bet on Bitcoin after Tesla (and a few other large companies) put significant numbers in it.
- alwillis 6y agoI've often said that the US government can, and will, outlaw crypto if it starts to feel threatened. That's not going to happen. Code and money are speech and bitcoin is both. Outlawing bitcoin would be unconstitutional. It would be one of the easiest cases the Supreme Court ever had. It’s treated as property by the IRS and a commodity by the CFTC and exchanges are regulated by the SEC. The US government has already approved it.
- klmadfejno 6y ago> It’s treated as property by the IRS and a commodity by the CFTC and exchanges are regulated by the SEC. The US government has already approved it. There are commodities that have become illegal.
- ArtWomb 6y agoInteresting data point that $TSLA operates its own full BTC nodes. Why not mining pools that use solar / spare car battery and tpu / cloud gpu cycles ;)
- olalonde 6y agoRunning a full Bitcoin node just means downloading and validating the blockchain, it doesn't require mining. It's just another way of saying they do not rely on a third party payment processor.
- camjohnson26 6y agoYeah, takes 2 seconds to run a docker container with a full node.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- juanani 6y agoSince Bitcoin is mainly only used for crime, does that mean that Tesla is enabling criminal movement? Didn't someone get indicted recently for providing a service that was used by criminals? Let's get them, DoJ!