Elon Musk's Tesla Has Invested $1.5 Billion Into Bitcoin
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Tesla has invested $1.5 billion into Bitcoin, according to an SEC filing today.
“Thereafter, we invested an aggregate $1.50 billion in bitcoin under this policy and may acquire and hold digital assets from time to time or long-term,” the filing said.
The filing added that Tesla expects to being accepting Bitcoin as payment for its products, including its cars, in the near future.
Bitcoin’s price has shot up on the news, rising from $39,000 to $43,000 at press time—breaking a new all-time high.
The filing says that Tesla updated its investment policy in January in order to diversify its cash on hand and maximize returns. Its policy says that it may invest its reserves into digital assets, gold, gold ETFs and other assets. It was with this new policy in mind that it invested heavily into Bitcoin.
Michael Saylor extended offer to Elon Musk
This Bitcoin purchase comes just over a month after MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor extended an invitation to Elon Musk, offering to show him his playbook for buying Bitcoin. “If you want to do your shareholders a $100 billion favor, convert the $TSLA balance sheet from USD to #BTC. Other firms on the S&P 500 would follow your lead & in time it would grow to become a $1 trillion favor,” Saylor said at the time.
Musk replied asking, “Are such large transactions even possible?” It’s likely he was referring to whether it’s possible to buy such large amounts of Bitcoin, not in terms of sending large Bitcoin transactions.
It wasn’t long before Musk started tweeting a lot more about cryptocurrency after this. On January 29, he changed his Twitter bio to just one word: Bitcoin. He later confirmed on Clubhouse that he was now a Bitcoin supporter.
“I am a supporter of bitcoin. I am late to the party but a supporter. Bitcoin is on the verge of getting broad acceptance by traditional finance people,” he told his audience.
He has also been incessantly tweeting about Dogecoin recently, from memes to comments that it will be the future currency of earth. But while he was pumping the price of Dogecoin, it was Bitcoin he wanted after all.
