Monero Community Clamor for XMR Payment Option for Tesla Cars

The Monero community in a proposal is asking Elon Musk to consider adding the privacy coin XMR as a payment option on the Tesla website. 

Bringing XMR Privacy Coin to Tesla

According to a community crowdfunding system (CCS) proposal on Tuesday ( Feb. 9, 2021), the Monero community is asking Tesla CEO Elon Musk to accept payment for three Tesla model 3 vehicles using Monero’s XMR as a payment method.

Monero’s proposal is coming on the heels of Tesla’s billion-dollar bitcoin investment. As previously reported by BTCManager, an SEC filing revealed that Tesla allocated $1.5 billion to purchase the flagship cryptocurrency. The company also stated that it could begin accepting bitcoin as a payment option for its cars.

Meanwhile, the proposal stated that Tesla should consider adding XMR as a payment option because of its privacy features. According to Monero, transactions using bitcoin or any other crypto could be traced by anyone because of their transparent blockchains. Monero, on the other hand, is more private, as it obfuscates transaction details such as sender and receiver’s addresses, including the amount involved.

Also, the Monero community would try to get Elon Musk’s attention by driving awareness to the proposal via Twitter. The Tesla CEO is expected to respond within 21 days, starting on February 9. If Musk did not acknowledge the tweet within the stipulated period and meet certain criteria, Monero would make a refund to all contributors.

The proposal has 11 contributors so far and has raised 890 XMR ($160,000). Furthermore, the cars would be donated to three charities. Giving a reason for pushing Monero as a payment option, the proposal stated:

“With the recent announcement that Bitcoin may be accepted for Tesla purchases, members of the Monero community came up with the idea that it would be preferable to have Monero along-side Bitcoin as a payment option when purchasing a Tesla, given its privacy preserving properties.”

Furthermore, the proposal believed that Tesla car owners would want to keep their transaction details private, which Monero stated that its privacy features could achieve, unlike public blockchains.

Regulators Strive to Track Monero Transactions

Monero, and other privacy coins, however, has come under the radar of regulators, as their privacy features have caused concern for various regulatory watchdogs, as they believe that criminals use such cons for illegal transactions.  In the U.S. authorities have been seeking ways to track Monero.

Back in September 2020, the U.S. Internal Revenue Services (IRS) put out a $625,000 bounty for anyone who could track Monero transactions. Later in November, blockchain analytic company CipherTrace, filed two patents for a solution that could track XMR transactions.