By
Tolu Ajiboye
April 8th, 2024
Mason Borda, a software engineer at the bitcoin wallets platform has made an order of new Tesla Model 3 electric car through Shakepay, the single use bitcoin credit card service provider.
The use of virtual currency as a payment method is becoming more popular nowadays. There is a broad range of items and services you can buy with bitcoin. It is especially convenient for retailers and businesses that accept payments from customers all over the world.
BitGo’s software engineer, Mason Borda, has preordered the new Tesla Model 3 with the use of virtual currency. As Borda unveiled in a blog post on Medium, he paid 2.413612 bitcoin (around 1000$) via the new app, called Shakepay.
Launched last month, Shakepay lets users to buy items with bitcoin at stores using NFC technology. The app enables users to top up their digital wallets, after what they will get a virtual Visa to manage their online transfers.
“Today there are many applications coming online that enable consumers to buy everyday goods for Bitcoin. So I decided to perform the momentous act of preordering my Tesla Model 3 with Bitcoin,” Borda wrote in a blog post. “Using my homebrew SMS interface for my BitGo web wallet, I loaded up a card on Shakepay with Bitcoin, and used the card to preorder a Tesla Model 3,” he said.
The whole process took just a minute to complete. Borda will now have to wait until next year to pay the remaining sum of $34,000.
Electric cars were often associated with slow vehicles that could not compete with cars running on gasoline. However, Tesla has managed to become the leading producer of high-performance electric and sports automobiles. Founded by Elon Musk, the company now manufactures the Model S sedan and the Model X SUV crossover. This year, the company plans to increase its annual production capacity to around 100,000 cars.
Tesla has presented its new Model 3 a few days ago. The car runs more than 200 miles per charge and accelerates to 60 miles per hour in less than 6 seconds. Currently, the vehicles can be preordered on the company’s website.
The popularity of bitcoin, as well as the technology behind it, is consistently rising due to such benefits as high speed and low cost of transactions.
The owners of Visa and Mastercard can spend their virtual currency anywhere these cards are accepted. Some major companies, including Amazon, Whole Foods, Dell, Bloomberg and Shopify, allow their customers to buy goods with bitcoin.
Last month, Wirex digital wallet launched a new feature, allowing users to acquire cryptocurrency via PayPal platform. Meantime, the tech giant Microsoft has integrated digital currency format into its Office software suite. The program, which is used by millions of people, will enable Excel users to analyze and study bitcoin data.
