Tesla, the world’s largest car company, has purchased US$1.5 billion worth of bitcoin as a long-term investment, according to the company’s SEC filing published 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 plans to accept bitcoin as payment for its products, including its cars, in the near future.
Bitcoin’s price skyrocketed on the news, rising from $39,000 to $44,290 at publishing time — a new all-time high.
“People have basically just been waiting for the moment that Elon Musk would announce one of his companies has allocated part of their treasury assets to bitcoin, so the Tesla news is not a huge surprise but is still a major development,” said Guy Hirsch, managing director for U.S. at eToro. “The fact it came only days after the recent Microstrategy conference is likely no coincidence, and is further proof that the smart money is still buying bitcoin even when many others were shedding BTC holdings as it continued to trade sideway.”
“Musk and Tesla move markets in a way few others can, and this may be the point where we look back and realize Bitcoin went mainstream,” Hirsch added.
Tesla’s filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission says that the car company 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
Tesla’s bitcoin purchase comes just over a month after MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor extended an invitation to fellow CEO Elon Musk, who is also the founder of SpaceX and the world’s richest man, 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,” Saylor told Musk at the time. “Other firms on the S&P 500 would follow your lead & in time it would grow to become a $1 trillion favor.”
Musk replied: “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.
Not long after this exchange, Musk started tweeting a lot more about cryptocurrency and bitcoin. On Jan. 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,” Musk told his audience.
Musk has also been incessantly tweeting about Dogecoin recently, from memes to comments that it will be the future currency of Earth.
But while Must was pumping the price of Dogecoin, his company was buying up bitcoin.
This story was originally published in Decrypt, a Forkast.News syndication partner, and appears here with additional updates by Forkast.News.
