According to the company’s report, which was made public on Wednesday, it still has $218 million in Bitcoin. Tesla declared that it had sold 75% of its Bitcoin holdings, worth $936 million at the time, in July. Following the sale, Tesla revealed that as of the end of June, the company still had $222 million in “digital assets” in its possession.
As COVID lockdowns continue in China, Musk had stated during the Q2 investor call that the company had sold its Bitcoin to raise cash. Given the uncertainty of COVID lockdowns in China, he said, “it was important for us to maximize our cash position.”
After MicroStrategy with 130,000 BTC (roughly $2.48 billion) and Galaxy Digital Holdings with 16,400 BTC (roughly $313 million), Tesla is still one of the largest holders of Bitcoin by a publicly traded company, despite that sale.
Both the decision at the time and the company’s position on cryptocurrency don’t appear to have been influenced by Musk’s plan to purchase Twitter and the subsequent legal battle over wanting to back out of the deal.
Leaked messages from September showed the world’s richest man discussing the potential future of the well-known social media platform with a number of tech entrepreneurs, including Jack Dorsey of Block Inc. and Sam Bankman-Fried of FTX. One suggestion was to include a Dogecoin payment option, Musk’s preferred digital currency.
Musk explained that the plan was to charge users a small fee to register a message on-chain, which would eliminate the majority of spam and automated comment posting by requiring 0.1 Doge.
