İnstitute of Graduate Studies - lisansustu@gelisim.edu.tr

Economics And Finance (Master) (Non Thesis)








 ELON MUSK: “YOU CAN NOW BUY A TESLA WITH BITCOIN”




Would you have believed if someone had come from the future and said that the money in your pocket replaces digital money over time and you could buy goods and services using Bitcoin just three or four years ago? It would be hard to imagine. However, the world changes day by day in front of our eyes. We try to keep up with this speed unavoidably.  The digital coins that are rapidly involved in our lives attract the attention of people even who have no idea about economics and finance today. For example, Galatasaray Football Club has a digital coin called Chiliz. If you have this money, you can have a say on the team's anthem, decide on the colors of the jersey players wear, or as Elon Musk says buy a Tesla car with Bitcoin.

Musk announced the news on his official Twitter account with the words "You can now buy a Tesla with Bitcoin. Bitcoin used in Tesla payments will not be converted into another currency; it will be used as Bitcoin.”.  Bitcoin, which was around $54.000 before Elon Musk's announcement getting together future's cars with future's money Bitcoin, rose to $55.371 immediately after the announcement, increasing by 3 percent in the last 24 hours. Bitcoin, which attracts the attention of young people in particular, gradually increases this current interest with the statement made by Elon Musk on his official Twitter account. Although the future is uncertain, it is foreseen that it will be talked a lot about Bitcoin, given the developments that have taken place.

The Other Side of the Coin

After Elon Musk’s statement, many countries and companies have expressed that payment can be made with Bitcoin. For example, Royal Motors, the distributor of rolls-Royce and Lotus brands in Turkey, announced that it would accept the purchase of crypto money. However, although the developments in this new world, where our consumption habits and payment systems are radically changed, have gained importance, concerns arise from another aspect. According to the written statement made by the CBRT, it was decided that crypto assets cannot be used in payments due to the risks such as non-regulation of crypto assets, irregular increase / decrease in their values, decentralized structure, being used illegally without the knowledge of the owners and being used in illegal activities. Platforms offering trading, custody, transfer or issuance services of crypto assets or transfers of funds from these platforms related to payment and electronic money institutions have been prohibited. Following this statement, the question comes if Bitcoin is only banned for security reasons. Are the states that cannot easily give up an established economic system  and are they worried about to be restricted from the areas they dominate? There were the concerns of "deterioration of the government-generated fiction" in the line spaces of the $2.8 billion penalty that was cut for "unfair competition in the payment systems sector" to the e-commerce company Alibaba by Chinese Competition Authority. In all of these developments, Bitcoin's value decreased by 3% in just one day. With this diminishing, the future of digital money arouses quite interest.

R.A. Burçin Çakır