Tesla Wants Your Bitcoin Without the Downside

https://subscribe.tolusnotes.com/issues/tesla-wants-your-bitcoin-without-the-downside-493754

by salakotolu • 5 years ago

18 48 5 years ago

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nightski6• 5 years ago

I don't see how this is "without the downside". A refund could end up being more expensive to Tesla in the long run (in terms of # of BTC). If BTC has a temporary dip they have to give you more BTC to equal the $ amount. BTC has demonstrated, while volatile, to be quite likely to keep nudging upward.

In addition, just because it is priced relative to USD doesn't mean it is accurate to say the transaction takes place in dollars. That is absolutely not true.

Lastly, as someone who has only bought 2 cars in my lifetime - who refunds cars? Is that common? I've never heard of such a thing. What is the return rate on Teslas?

tptacek5• 5 years ago

Since they can choose how to refund, they can refund in USD as long as BTC is appreciating, and refund in BTC if BTC depreciates below the spot price at the time of purchase. On the backend, they can just convert BTC to cash if they're worried about currency risk.

nightski6• 5 years ago

Fair enough but the consumer can also play the same game at time of purchase. BTC up today? Buy a car. BTC down today? Do not.

Either way you get the USD equivalent back. I can't imagine someone actually caring about this. If you think it's likely that you will return a car, maybe think about such a large purchase a little more?

shahan312• 5 years ago

Tesla's policy I believe is 7 days.

I think California allows returning a used car within 2 business days and under 250 miles.

akmarinov• 5 years ago

They quietly got rid of the 7 days policy - https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/16/21520086/tesla-full-refu...

brudgers2• 5 years ago

In the case of a safety recall in the US, the manufacturer gets to choose from three options to address it.

1. Fix it for free.

2. Replace the vehicle with a new vehicle.

3. Purchase the vehicle back.

Bitcoin potentially provides arbitrage with the third option. Safety recalls are not uncommon. Suppose Tesla ships an over-the-air software change and then recalls the vehicles.

State by state Lemon-laws also might come into play.

At a minimum there is nothing buyer friendly in the clause.

capableweb5• 5 years ago

And finally, taxes. Imagine owing capital gains tax on top of sales tax? When you buy something in Bitcoin, it’s as if you’re liquidating an asset. In this case, you’ll pay whatever capital gains tax applies to the Bitcoin you liquidated on top of sales taxes for your purchase.

The author seems to misunderstand how the transaction happen and how laws look in a lot of countries.

In many places, the only time you have to pay taxes related to Bitcoin is when you convert it to another currency, be it Euro, American Dollars or Ethereum's Eth, you pay when you change it, and it's usually capital gain tax that gets paid.

By allowing you to buy a Tesla in Bitcoins directly (since Tesla runs their own nodes as well, apparently) you can avoid having to pay those capital gain taxes, as you're not actually realizing any gain, you're using it as a currency and in it's current form. You're not converting your Bitcoin to USD and then use that as purchase, you're purchasing it with Bitcoins directly.

All this is very early though, and I don't know of any court cases so both my opinion and everyone elses are just guesses at this point. Gonna be interesting to see what happens in the future.

Disclaimer: since I'm writing "how laws look in a lot of countries" I'm obviously not putting forward a US-centric view that many replies seems to assume I mean. And also, obviously don't take random advice on the internet regarding tax laws, check your own countries.

tw042• 5 years ago

So you're an accountant, or a tax lawyer? If not you might want to give that a massive, giant, IANAL because that's not even remotely accurate. So wrong in fact, the IRS specifically calls out the fact that vehicles are not exempt from gains taxation.

https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/like-kind-exchanges-now-limited...

Effective Jan. 1, 2018, exchanges of personal or intangible property such as machinery, equipment, vehicles, artwork, collectibles, patents, and other intellectual property generally do not qualify for nonrecognition of gain or loss as like-kind exchanges.

capableweb5• 5 years ago

So you're an accountant, or a tax lawyer? If not you might want to give that a massive, giant, IANAL

No, I'm not and I don't need to disclaim what my profession is either. What is with the internets obsession about "IANAL"? Isn't it more proper to assume that someone is NOT a lawyer, accountant or whatever if they don't say anything, than the opposite? (Irony is that you failed to add "IANAL" to your comment, should I assume you're actually a lawyer?)

Sure, IRS might act like that but not every country, and if you read my comment again you see that my view is broader than just the IRS.

dogma11383• 5 years ago

That’s not true, converting one asset class into another or in fact any trade would normally trigger a capital gains tax, it’s currently complicated with crypto because it’s new and haven’t been fully tested yet as far as the law goes.

From Tesla’s perspective they don’t care they assume and rightfully so that you are responsible for any taxes and accounting obligations on your end, it’s not any different than buying a Tesla with normal currency from profits you haven’t paid taxes yet on.

It doesn’t even have to be a trade with a mutual exchange, if you say want to gift a house to your kids or your spouse and you transfer ownership you’ll be liable for capitals gain tax even tho no sale has actually occurred.

modeless2• 5 years ago

This is false. It's not an opinion and not a guess. You must calculate capital gains taxes every time you send bitcoins to anyone in exchange for anything.

0xfaded• 5 years ago

This would definitely not fly in most parts of the world. Taxable events pretty much occur whenever one asset type is converted to another unless explicitly excluded. And since car registration basically ties the car to a named person, it's a particularly difficult form of private consumption to hide.

cactus2093• 5 years ago

Note that in the US this is completely wrong and bad advice. And I'd be very surprised if there were a lot of countries where it was substantially different, but I don't know for sure about every country.

It's not "just guesses at this point". The IRS has explicitly stated that cryptocurrencies are taxed as assets and subject to normal capital gains. This means they work like every other asset subject to capital gains. I can't transfer shares of stock to a car dealership, or pay with gold coins, to avoid paying capital gains or people would have been doing this forever. And similarly I can't do it with bitcoin. You definitely owe capital gains on the US dollar purchase value of the car minus your cost basis for the amount of bitcoin spent.

I have to say though, I am in awe in some way at the boldness of your claims. What must be going on in your head to take something that you have no idea about, and then just assume without looking into it even a little bit that nobody else could possibly have any idea about it either, and confidently declare that as fact?

capableweb5• 5 years ago

I have to say though, I am in awe in some way at the boldness of your claims. What must be going on in your head to take something that you have no idea about, and then just assume without looking into it even a little bit that nobody else could possibly have any idea about it either, and confidently declare that as fact?

Let's remember the "Assume good faith" guideline and also remember that not everyone here is having a US-centric view on how things are. Seemingly you read about half of my comment but not the rest, as I never "confidently declare[d] that as fact".

fblp• 5 years ago

This is interesting. I can't think of a comparison for foreign currency where the seller would reserve the right to refund you with an alternate currency (such as USD), rather than the currency you paid in.

However, often brands like Apple incorporate currency risk into their higher foreign prices.

tptacek5• 5 years ago

Tesla will let you purchase a car in bitcoin (but denominated in USD). When refunding purchases made in Bitcoin, it can choose BTC or USD.

Tesla's support for cryptocurrency seems morally in the same ballpark as that politician who was wearing a cloth "masks are stupid I'm just wearing this because I have to" mask over an N95.

dan-robertson2• 5 years ago

It feels more like Tesla are simply trying to sell you a car rather than sell you a weird financial instrument that amounts to a Tesla convertible into some Bitcoin, at the same price as a Tesla (so they are basically giving you a free at-the-money call on Bitcoin and the only cost of exercising it is that you’d have to wait longer to get your Tesla.) This doesn’t feel like an easy position to hedge for the company and Tesla doesn’t feel to me like the kind of company that should be figuring out how to hedge such a thing.

Instead they sell you a car and give you a sufficiently bad deal for the refund that you will only use it if you actually want the refund rather than because you want to speculate on the price of Bitcoin.

mensetmanusman• 5 years ago

This is basically saying, don’t buy a Tesla with bitcoin if you have any thought that you might return it, because that will make things super complicated with such a volatile currency.

If it wasn’t this way, people would return their vehicle if they saw bitcoin value jump up 100%.

brudgers2• 5 years ago

The transaction could be entirely pegged to the dollar.

jlrubin2• 5 years ago

patio11's take on this rings the most true to me.

So this "Look, if you treat your Tesla reservation like an option on Bitcoins, we've designed it to be literally the worst possible option on Bitcoins. Please, please, please: don't try this." is actually a quite reasonable policy.

https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1375137941933027333

capableweb5• 5 years ago

Worth remembering that patio11 has a vested interest (via Stripe) in seeing Bitcoin fail and the current financial system continue operating like it is today.

I'm not saying he is wrong here, or wrong in general about Bitcoin, or that you shouldn't take his advice into consideration. Just to remember when people speak for/against Bitcoin they sometimes can have deeper (even sometimes unsubconcious) motives.

bb88• 5 years ago

His argument is either a good or bad one. If anything his current position makes him an expert.

dan-robertson2• 5 years ago

I think this is the correct take.

If you’re really worried that you might want a refund on your Tesla before it is completed, then just buy one second hand. It will be cheaper and you won’t need to wait. You could probably even find someone willing to sell you one for Bitcoin

fallingknife• 5 years ago

Fair enough. If you want to transact in a unusual, volitile currency, you should expect the counterparty to be unwilling to take those risks. If you don't like it, you can always just sell your BTC for USD, and buy the normal way.

craigc2• 5 years ago

This is a pretty terrible take. First of all it only applies to refunds. Second, if you are afraid of missing out on Bitcoin gains then DON’T BUY YOUR CAR USING BITCOIN.

I have spent Bitcoin on things like web hosting in the past, I paid probably $150 worth of Bitcoin on a server when the price of Bitcoin was less than $10k. If I had kept that Bitcoin it would be worth around $1,000 now. Does that mean I should be allowed to ask the web hosting company for a refund or should expect them to refund me the full amount in Bitcoin? Absolutely not.

If they did it any other way then the customer would be the one taking on zero risk. If the price of Bitcoin went down you would keep your car, and if the price went up, you could ask for a refund to increase the total dollar amount of money you already spent.

jiofih• 5 years ago

That’s a fair take, but what about not refunding the full amount when BTC goes down? That seems very consumer hostile. They should take a symmetrical risk like everybody else.

craigc2• 5 years ago

Yeah. I agree that is not great, but it also is legal language and says “might be less”, not a guarantee. The way I would probably do it is always refund the equivalent U.S. dollar amount of the initial purchase. That may very well be what they plan to do in practice and this is just language to cover them incase they need to make exceptions.

One thing that makes the Tesla case unique is that they plan to hold the Bitcoin they receive _as_ Bitcoin whereas most companies who accept Bitcoin immediately convert it to dollars. So I think they have to have some leeway.

Similar to my other example, if you spend 1 BTC @ $50k to buy a car then the price of Bitcoin crashes to $30k and you ask for a refund, it isn’t feasible for Tesla to pay you 1.6 BTC as your refund cause then you end up with more BTC than you paid initially and Tesla didn’t gain BTC by holding your original amount.

dyslexit4• 5 years ago

Why is this a terrible take? The majority of this short article focuses specifically on the refunds, while you're focusing on the part about missing out rising BTC* price. That's where Tesla has only upside and the customer only downside, which is a pretty valid take.

throwaway4good• 5 years ago

"There’s also the pain the customer will feel knowing that they could’ve bought two Teslas if only they held on to their BTC for a little longer."

Dear internet. When are you going to get over this bitcoin thing? It is getting silly.

modeless2• 5 years ago

Not only is this not some kind of "genius" evil scheme, this is in fact the only way that makes sense at all. If you could buy a Tesla with Bitcoin with a guaranteed refund of the same amount of Bitcoin, you could use it as a financial instrument. Buy a bunch of Teslas for Bitcoin, then if Bitcoin goes up you send them back for Bitcoin refunds, and if Bitcoin goes down you sell the Teslas for dollars instead. Now you can speculate in Bitcoin risk free! Obviously it can't work this way.

akvadrako• 5 years ago

Actually the only fair scheme would be to always price purchases and refunds in the same currency. Of course that can't be bitcoin.

xiphias2• 5 years ago

I'm pretty sure this would be illegal in the EU where the full (EUR) price has to be refunded within 14 days of delivery. Whenever I bought things with BTC, only fiat refund was possible for legal reasons. Anyways Tesla so far is respecting EU law and I expect it to do that with Bitcoin as well when they start accepting Bitcoin there.

Tesla Wants Your Bitcoin Without the Downside

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