Bitcoin hit a record high on Monday after Elon Musk's electric car maker Tesla revealed that it has bought about $1.5 billion of the cryptocurrency and will soon let buyers purchase vehicles using it.
Bitcoin's price topped $44,000, up more than 12% in morning trading on the news, buried in Tesla's annual report.
The report says Tesla has "invested an aggregate $1.50 billion in bitcoin," adding that it "may acquire and hold digital assets from time to time or long term".
Meanwhile, the company plans to accept bitcoin payments for its products "in the near future".
Last week Musk said on audio app Clubhouse that "I do at this point think bitcoin is a good thing. I am a supporter," adding that the cryptocurrency is "on the verge of getting broad acceptance by conventional finance people". In January the tech mogul changed the bio of his Twitter account, which has 46 million followers, to include #bitcoin.
While Tesla appears to be making a serious bet on bitcoin, Musk has seemed more preoccupied with its jokey, meme-ified sibling Dogecoin.
Dogecoin rallied 65% on Sunday to hit a market value of over $10 billion after the billionaire spent several days tweeting about it to his 46 million followers.
Nearly two and a half million people voted in a Musk Twitter poll offering the choice of dogecoin or all other crypto combined as the "future currency of the Earth". Dogecoin secured 71.3%.