Tesla has officially started accepting cryptocurrency as payment for electric vehicles. Last month Tesla announced a change in its investment policy, reflected in its investment in cryptocurrency and gold. Tesla’s purchase of bitcoins in the amount of about $ 1,5 billion was confirmation of the change.

Along with major investments in bitcoin, Tesla announced its intention to start accepting cryptocurrency as a payment method as part of its operations.

A few weeks after that, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that the company had indeed begun accepting payments in bitcoins.

Now, a deposit when booking a purchase of a Tesla electric car can be paid in both fiat (US dollars) and bitcoins.

In February, after Tesla announced the purchase of bitcoins, the price of the cryptocurrency rose significantly. And today’s announcement by Elon Musk also led to an increase in the value of bitcoin, by $ 1000.

The adoption of Bitcoin as a payment method is expected to help Tesla’s EV sales by attracting fortunes from crypto enthusiasts to the brand.

At the same time, the automaker has already been repeatedly criticized for investing in bitcoin, since a large amount of electricity is spent on mining cryptocurrency, maintaining the functioning of the blockchain and executing transactions, which is reflected in the rate of global warming of the planet. Still, electric vehicles are designed to combat this.