[craigc]

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]

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.

[craigc]

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.

[maxerickson]

Why would you give a large company "some leeway" when entering into a contract with them? Expect them to exercise the language they put in the contract!

[dyslexit]

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.