Tesla CEO Elon Musk clarified in a tweet early Monday that the electric vehicle maker "has not sold any Bitcoin."
Tesla shareholder Dave Lee has run a rough calculation on Twitter to show how many BTC the company owns. In his estimation, Lee has used the fact that Tesla holds around $1.47 billion in Bitcoin as of 30 June, as revealed on the latest earnings call.
Earlier in the year, Tesla started accepting BTC as a payment method. However, just a couple of months later the company rolled back on the policy, citing environmental concerns.
During the “B World” event earlier in the month, Musk revealed that he himself holds Bitcoin as well. And not only Tesla, but his other company, SpaceX, also owns the crypto.
Other cryptocurrencies in Musk’s portfolio include Ethereum and Dogecoin, according to him in the same event.
BTC PRICE
At the time of writing, Bitcoin’s price floats just under $40k, up 23% in the last 7 days. The crypto has accumulated 9% gains in the last month.
Here is a chart the shows the trends in the value of the cryptocurrency over the past one year:
There has been some speculation about how large Tesla's exposure is to Bitcoins or any other cryptocurrency, since Musk initially supported the world's largest cryptocurrency before throwing his weight behind Dogecoin, a meme-based currency that was primarily launched to poke fun at Bitcoin. He has again appeared to support Bitcoin and also agreed with concerns among environmentalists about its use of fossil fuel for mining.
Bitcoin jumped as much as 15% after Tesla made the disclosure in a regulatory filing, with prices exceeding $44,000 for the first time. Tesla also said it would begin accepting the digital token as a form of payment for its electric cars.
Other companies have made similar investments in Bitcoin. MicroStrategy Inc. has spent some $1.1 billion on the token. In October, Square Inc., headed by longtime crypto advocate Jack Dorsey, announced that it converted about $50 million of its total assets as of the second quarter of 2020 into the token. Proselytizers like Bill Miller of Miller Value Partners have said this was just the start of what was sure to be a trend across Main Street.
Bitcoin’s journey to a record has been marked with big swings that continue to stoke uncertainty about its outlook. Some see speculators at work and an inevitable bubble bursting. Others cite high-profile backers and interest from long-term investors as evidence of a more durable rally.
However, Musk seems to have reversed course in recent weeks in favor of dogecoin, the meme-inspired cryptocurrency. Tesla last week also "suspended vehicle purchases using bitcoin," out of concern over "rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for bitcoin mining." The price of bitcoin dropped about 5% in the first minutes after Musk's announcement.
Musk has since been hitting back on Twitter against users who are critical of his cryptocurrency stance. Influential venture investor Fred Wilson, a founding partner of Union Square Ventures, tweeted Friday: "He's playing games. It is hard to take anyone who does that seriously. I've lost enormous respect for him over the last year because of it."
Wilson added, "Deep respect for what he does with his talents. Less for what he does with his tweets."
Musk is also pushing further into dogecoin. His aerospace venture, SpaceX, announced last week it would accept dogecoin as payment to launch "DOGE-1 mission to the Moon." His endorsements have helped boost the price of the coin, pushing acceptance among some traders.
Crypto exchange platform Coinbase has said it would offer the digital coin in the next six-to-eight weeks. Other popular trading platforms among retail investors, Robinhood and Binance, already allow users to trade dog ecoin.