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The American electric car manufacturer Tesla invested $ 1.5 billion in the cryptocurrency in January. This emerges from a document that is available to the American stock exchange regulator. According to the document, Tesla is also considering accepting bitcoins as a means of payment in the future under certain conditions.
The news promptly led to a new all-time high for the cryptocurrency. According to the analysis website Coinmarketcap, a Bitcoin cost more than $ 43,000 at times on Monday, an increase of twelve 12 percent compared to the previous day. Tesla boss Elon Musk had already commented on cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin more often in the past. The mere mention of the hashtag Bitcoin on Musk’s profile on Twitter recently helped the crypto currency jump in price by over 10 percent, but it quickly fizzled out again.
With Tesla’s entry into the most important of the cyber currencies, their acceptance could increase further. And Tesla is not alone. In October, the payment service provider PayPal had already announced that it would enable its customers to trade Bitcoin in the future, which led to a sharp rise in the price.
The US investment bank JP Morgan even announced a long-term price target of $ 146,000 in January. But not everyone is so optimistic. Critics see a bubble in the Internet currency and criticize the high energy consumption as well as the high exchange rate fluctuations, which call into question its use as a currency. Bitcoin is increasingly being perceived as digital gold and no longer just as a digital currency, says Philipp Sandner, head of the Blockchain Center at the private Frankfurt School of Finance. The function as a means of payment still exists, of course. As a rule, Bitcoins are then immediately exchanged for conventional currencies in order to avoid losses due to exchange rate fluctuations.
Created after the financial crisis in 2008, Bitcoin has soared. From a gimmick for programmers, he developed into a billion dollar speculative object and created a new investment class, cryptocurrencies. With the introduction of a digital euro, which the ECB is discussing, attention for cryptocurrencies could increase further. However, these will not be limited in their quantity – in contrast to Bitcoin.
