Tesla’s $1.5 billion investment in bitcoin has not gone away. Taken together, it is estimated that Tesla has bought between $31,000 and $37,000 in Bitcoin. It’s not a low price. It is not easy to decide to invest 10% of the cash held by a company in bitcoin with an annual price change rate approaching 80%. That would mean that CEO Elon Musk is confident about the future of Bitcoin.
Personally, it is also an investment of $1.5 billion, but it seemed more news that Tesla said it would sooner or later receive the price of the car in bitcoin. When global manufacturers start making Bitcoin payments, they can sell products without having to pay specialty companies like Visa or Mastercard. If fees paid to payment companies are reduced and consideration of installment sales, etc., interest trading becomes possible even if it is not a financial institution.
That’s why a group of analysts immediately picked Apple as the next hitter after Tesla. Apple, which makes iPhones, is interested in payment methods enough to induce a lock-in effect on products through Apple Pay and Apple Card, and there is a good chance that cryptocurrency will be used for this. Change does not stop at manufacturing. PayPal, a global payment company that started its cryptocurrency trading service last year, plans to introduce bitcoin payments at 26 million affiliates from this year.
What does it mean for society for front-line global companies to introduce cryptocurrency payments including bitcoin? The most obvious signs are likely to arise in the taxation area. It means that if governments do not quickly introduce digital currency (CBDC) with a user environment similar to cryptocurrency, it will be quite difficult to collect taxes in the future.
Currently, all cryptocurrency-related taxes are received in legal currency based on the time when the cryptocurrency is converted to the legal currency (dollar, won). So, the cryptocurrency exchange, the place where this exchange takes place, becomes the key point for tax collection. However, if companies accept the price of goods in cryptocurrency, consumers do not need to convert their bitcoins into legal currency. In other words, it becomes very difficult for the government to figure out how money moves around. At that time, it will not be easy to respond with the current method of grabbing cryptocurrency exchanges and letting them know who has how much bitcoin and how much they earned.
There is only one way. It is to create digital currency that the government can manage as soon as possible and make it available to people before it is too late. Of course, in a wallet that deals with the currency, you should be able to exchange cryptocurrency without inconvenience. In a recent research note published by Australian investment bank Macquarie, he pointed out that if the U.S. Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank’s adoption of CBDC is slow, it could be pushed out of the competition for bitcoin-like cryptocurrencies. From the point of view of the general consumer, whether it is a cryptocurrency using a blockchain or a digital fiat currency that does not use a blockchain, the detailed technical differences do not come well. Digital experience is important. In the end, it is highly likely that the one who first reaches popularization in that area will preoccupy an advantageous position in the market.
In a world where people buy Tesla cars with bitcoins and iPhones, the mindset of taxing bitcoin gains may be challenged. This is because if cryptocurrency functions like currency, there is no reason to tax bitcoin trade gains, just as we do not tax dollar exchange gains. Tesla calls CBDC I wonder which country’s government will be the first to respond to this cry.
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