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Summary
- General Motors is reportedly seeking feedback on how cryptocurrency could be used for partial or full payments.
- It seems Tesla's move could've spiked the 113-year-old company's interest in accepting cryptocurrency as a form of payment.
- Last month, GM CEO Mary Barra had said that the company has no plans to invest in bitcoin.
Vehicle manufacturing giant General Motors (NYSE: GM) may be the next company to accept Bitcoin as payment after Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) boss Elon Musk took to Twitter on Wednesday and announced that the electric-car maker will soon start accepting bitcoins in the US for selling cars.
GM is reportedly seeking feedback on how cryptocurrency could be used for partial or full payments. It seems Tesla's move could've spiked the 113-year-old company's interest in accepting cryptocurrency as a form of payment for its wide range of vehicles.
Not paying attention to warnings like bitcoin's rally will come to an end and it will crash someday, Mr Musk announced the decision and said Tesla will not convert the money into conventional currencies like dollars and will store the money received from customers as bitcoin.
In February, he bought bitcoin worth US$ 1.5 billion and announced plans to accept the crypto as a form of payment, which had resulted in a massive price surge.
@Kalkine Image 2021
Did GM chief ‘embrace’ cryptocurrency in the past?
Last month while releasing results for the fourth-quarter earnings, GM CEO Mary Barra had said that the company has no plans to invest in bitcoin, but cryptocurrency is worth monitoring and that the company will evaluate its options.
She said that if there's strong customer demand in the future, the company might give an option of buying cars using cryptocurrency.
The automaker had already set its foot after it began investing in blockchain technology two years ago. It announced a partnership with Spring Labs in 2019, which is a blockchain specialist.
A look at the company’s financials
The company, which plans to become carbon neutral by 2040 both in its operations and global products, has a market cap of US$81 billion and offers a 14.39 per cent return on equity. The stock grew 163 per cent in a year and 39.7 per cent year-to-date (YTD).
In Q4 2020, the company's net sales and revenue were US$ 37 billion, an increase of 21.7 per cent year-over-year (YoY). For the same period, the net income attributable to stockholders was US$ 2,846 million, compared to a loss of US$ 194 million in Q4 2019.
