Tesla, the leading electric vehicle manufacturer in the United States, has added Dogecoin as a payment option on its official website. This move comes after CEO Elon Musk announced in March of this year that Tesla would accept Dogecoin as a form of payment for its electric cars. According to the detailed explanation provided on the Tesla website, some products now support payment with Dogecoin. These products will display the Dogecoin symbol next to the order button, allowing buyers to transfer Dogecoin from their wallets to the Tesla Dogecoin wallet for payment.
Tesla emphasizes that only Dogecoin is currently accepted as a payment method, and any other digital assets sent to Tesla may result in the loss of those assets. The company also specifies that the price of all eligible Tesla products will be clearly stated in Dogecoin and will include any applicable taxes. However, there are a few important considerations for Dogecoin payments, such as the fact that a single order cannot be paid with multiple wallets, orders cannot be canceled once placed, and returns are not applicable to products purchased with Dogecoin.
Although Tesla has been accepting Dogecoin as a payment method for certain products, such as apparel and accessories, since 2022, this recent update to the Dogecoin payment instructions may indicate that Tesla is gradually easing restrictions on cryptocurrency payments. Encouraged by this news and the surge in Bitcoin, Dogecoin experienced a significant increase in value, reaching $0.17 before settling at $0.157, representing a 5.3% increase in the past 24 hours.
It is worth noting that Tesla previously purchased $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin in February 2021 and began accepting Bitcoin as a form of payment in March of the same year. However, Musk announced in May that Tesla would temporarily suspend Bitcoin payments due to concerns about the environmental impact of Bitcoin mining and transactions. Nevertheless, Musk has expressed that Tesla is not ruling out the possibility of resuming Bitcoin payments in the future, as long as Bitcoin miners use a reasonable amount of renewable energy (around 50%) and there is a positive trend towards sustainability. With the ongoing progress in the use of renewable energy by miners, it may not be long before we see the day when Bitcoin can be used to purchase Tesla vehicles once again.