Elon Musk, and by extension, Tesla, have been one of the biggest proponents of bitcoin. The automotive manufacturer which is headed by the billionaire had been a big push in the first bitcoin run-up towards a new all-time high in May 2021. This had come as a result of the EV manufacturer announcing that it would be accepting BTC as a payment method for its cars.
Not too long after, the company had repealed its decision to accept the digital asset as a method of payment, citing environmental concerns as the reason behind this. However, it did not explicitly back away from bitcoin as it made investments into the asset. In a recently released financial report from the company, Tesla reveals that it continues to hold on to it BTC that it had purchased last year.
Tesla Did Not Increase Bitcoin Holdings
Elon Musk had revealed last year during ‘The B Word’ conference that Tesla, the company which he runs as CEO, held bitcoin on its balance sheet. While most were not surprised, it was still a news-worthy revelation and was the subject of countless headlines. Musk had also revealed that the company had no intentions of selling the BTC and would hold onto it.
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Since then though, it seems the company has stuck to its decision to not sell but it had not increased its holdings in the digital asset either. Financial reports from the company showed that Tesla did not purchase any new bitcoin in the last quarter of 2021.
BTC trending higher post-crash | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView.com
It also did not record any impairments in the same time period as it did in the third quarter of the year where it was to report impairment of $51 million on its bitcoin holdings. The value of the investment had remained flat given that the value of BTC did not fluctuate much during this time. Its holdings sat at a value of $1.2 billion for the quarter, marking profits on the investments it had made earlier in the year.
Not Ruling Out Crypto Payments
When Tesla had announced it was stopping bitcoin payments, it had come with a clause that would see the company resume BTC payments. Musk, in a tweet, had explained that once bitcoin mining reached 50% renewable energy, then it would resume the payments.
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This is still yet to happen though but Tesla has not ruled out cryptocurrency payments entirely. The company officially started accepting meme coin Dogecoin, a favorite of CEO Elon Musk, as payment for Tesla merchandise. It explained that it will use this as a test run to see how Dogecoin payments would work on its platform. All items listed for Dogecoin payments were quickly sold out following the announcement.
Tesla remains the second publicly traded company with the largest bitcoin holdings, coming behind MicroStrategy and its enormous stash of more than 120K BTC.
Featured image from TechBooky, chart from TradingView.com