Elon Musk, and by extension Tesla, has been a vocal supporter of bitcoin. The billionaire’s car manufacturing was a major driver in the first bitcoin run-up to a new all-time high in May 2021. This was in response to the EV manufacturer’s announcement that it would accept Bitcoin as a payment method for its vehicles.
Not long after, the corporation reversed its plan to accept the digital asset as payment, citing environmental concerns as the reason. However, it did not explicitly abandon bitcoin as it made investments in the asset. Tesla admits in a recently disclosed financial report that it is still holding on to the BTC that it purchased last year.
Tesla’s Bitcoin holdings have not increased
During last year’s ‘The B Word’ conference, Elon Musk announced that Tesla, the firm he leads as CEO, had bitcoin on its financial sheet. While most people were not surprised, it was nonetheless a newsworthy revelation that sparked numerous headlines. Musk further stated that the corporation had no plans to sell the BTC and keep it.
However, it appears that the corporation has stuck to its commitment not to sell, but it has also not expanded its holdings in the digital asset. According to the company’s financial disclosures, Tesla did not purchase any new bitcoin in the fourth quarter of 2021.
It also did not register any impairments over the same time period as it was supposed to in the third quarter of the year when it was supposed to disclose a $51 million impairment on its bitcoin holdings. Given that the value of BTC did not move significantly throughout this time, the investment’s worth stayed constant. Its holdings were worth $1.2 billion during the quarter, reflecting returns on investments made earlier in the year.
Not Excluding Cryptocurrency Payments
When Tesla stated that it was ceasing bitcoin payments, it included a provision that allowed the business to resume BTC payments. Musk said in a tweet that if bitcoin mining hits 50 percent renewable energy, payments will resume.
Although Tesla has not completely dismissed out of bitcoin payments, this has yet to happen. Dogecoin, a favorite of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, is now officially accepted as payment for Tesla products. It added that this would be a test run to assess how Dogecoin payments will work on its platform. All items advertised for Dogecoin payments were rapidly sold out following the announcement.
Tesla is still the second-largest publicly traded business in terms of bitcoin holdings, trailing only MicroStrategy and its massive cache of more than 120K BTC.
