- Tesla Bitcoin holdings haven’t changed since the second quarter of 2022.
- The electric car company still has $218 million in Bitcoin.
- In July, Tesla said that it had sold 75% of the Bitcoins it owned, which was worth about $936 million at the time.
Tesla Bitcoin Holdings
Tesla Bitcoin holdings haven’t changed since the second quarter of 2022, according to documents released by the electric car company before its investor relations call for the third quarter.
Tesla’s report, which was made public on Wednesday, says that the company still has $218 million in Bitcoin. In July, Tesla said that it had sold 75% of the Bitcoins it owned, which was worth about $936 million at the time. After the sale, Tesla said at the end of June that it still had “digital assets” worth $222 million on its balance sheet.
COVID lockdowns in China
Elon Musk said during the Q2 investor call that the company sold its Bitcoin to get cash while COVID lockdowns in China continue. “Given the uncertainty of COVID lockdowns in China, it was important for us to make the most of our cash,” he said.
Even though they sold Bitcoin, Tesla is still one of the largest publicly traded companies to hold Bitcoin, behind MicroStrategy with 130,000 BTC (about $2.48 billion) and Galaxy Digital Holdings with 16,400 BTC (about $313 million).
Elon Musk plan to buy Twitter and the legal battle that followed when he wanted to back out of the deal didn’t affect the decision at the time, and it doesn’t seem to have changed the company’s view on cryptocurrency either.
In September, messages that had been leaked showed that the world’s richest man talked with tech entrepreneurs like Jack Dorsey of Block Inc. and Sam Bankman-Fried of FTX about the possible future of the popular social media platform. One idea was to let people pay with Dogecoin, which is Musk’s favourite cryptocurrency.
Elon Musk said the idea was for people to pay a small amount to register a message on-chain. This would cut down on spam and bots by making it cost 0.1 Doge to post or repost comments.
