London/New York | Bitcoin took another large stride toward mainstream acceptance on Monday (Tuesday AEDT) after billionaire Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company, Tesla, said it had bought $US1.5 billion ($1.9 billion) of the cryptocurrency and would soon accept it as a form of payment for cars, sending the cryptocurrency shooting higher.

The announcements, buried deep in Tesla’s 2020 annual report, drove a roughly 20 per cent surge in the world’s most widely held cryptocurrency, to over $US47,000. At current prices, 0.8 of a bitcoin would be enough to buy an entry-level Tesla Model 3.

Reuters