Bitcoin tops $57,000 after Tesla starts accepting crypto asset as payment

Prices of the world’s oldest cryptocurrency, bitcoin, regained the $57,000 level on Wednesday after Tesla chief Elon Musk announced that people can now start buying the company’s electric vehicles using the digital asset.

According to Musk, Tesla is using internal and open-source software and operates bitcoin nodes directly. “Bitcoin paid to Tesla will be retained as bitcoin, not converted to fiat currency,” Musk tweeted. The payment facility has been rolled out only in the US as of now and will be made available outside of the country later this year.

Bitcoin, which was trading in the red below the $54,000 level spurted past the $57,000 level reacting to the Musk’s announcement. At 6.15pm IST, the digital asset was trading 3.2% higher at $56,840.72 after moving in a wide range of $53,611.02-57,239.10 over the past 24 hours, as per CoinGecko.