The price of Bitcoin (BTC) is surging higher on Monday after Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) announced a $1.5 billion investment in the cryptocurrency.
Tesla revealed its bitcoin investment in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In this filing, the company notes that it updated its investment guidelines in January. This allows for more varied investment opportunities.
According to that filing, the company picked up a total of $1.5 billion in bitcoin after changing its policy. Tesla will also start accepting bitcoin as a form of payment for its products in the near future.
While the price of bitcoin is soaring on the news, Tesla does point out that the investment comes with its own unique set of risks. That includes possible changing laws surrounding cryptocurrency, the lack of a physical form making it susceptible to malicious attacks by hackers, and other issues.
Tesla’s investment in bitcoin comes as its founder and CEO, Elon Musk, shares his interest in another cryptocurrency, Dogecoin (CCC:DOGE). Dogecoin isn’t quite the heavy hitter that bitcoin is with values still in the cents. Even so, that isn’t stopping Musk and retail investors from boosting the price up.
While dogecoin is still a low-value cryptocurrency, its investors want to push it up to $1 per token. To put that in perspective, the virtual currency reached an all-time high of 8.7 cents over the weekend. While that’s still a far way off from $1, more celebrity investors are joining Musk in boosting its price by sharing memes on social media.
BTC was up 13.8% as of Monday morning.
On the date of publication, William White did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article.
