Tesla became one of the early firms to embrace BTC, adding it to its balance sheet in 2021; however, it all but abandoned this initiative, and the total value of its holdings has fallen by two-thirds, despite BTC appreciating by more than 30%.
During this same period Elon Musk, the founder and leader of Tesla, has gone from a frequent cryptocurrency promoter to someone who rarely mentions or endorses it.
This depression in value has occurred despite the fact that Musk had unprecedented access to the federal government early in Donald Trump’s second administration through the so-called “DOGE” initiative.
This access also coincided with a period when the administration was rapidly trying to shift its regulatory stance to support Trump’s vision of himself as a supporter of the crypto industry, which has embraced him.
Read more: Elon Musk now worth more than 200 Donald Trumps
In 2021 Tesla originally acquired 43,200 BTC and announced that it expected “to begin accepting BTC as a form of payment for our products.”
Around this same time, Musk had added “#bitcoin” to his Twitter bio, after which the asset briefly surged. He also appeared on a voice chat on social media site Clubhouse to say that he was a supporter of BTC.
However, Musk’s Tesla didn’t maintain this stash of BTC indefinitely.
Read more: Elon Musk promised to fund Dogecoin, now the foundation accounts are overdue
Less than two months after this acquisition, Musk took to Twitter to explain that Tesla had to start selling in order “to prove liquidity of BTC as an alternative to holding cash on balance sheet.”
Two months after that initial sale, Musk again took to Twitter to announce that Tesla would no longer be accepting BTC payments.
He cited concerns “about rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for BTC mining” and added that Tesla would use it for transactions again once “mining transitions to more sustainable energy.”
After this, there was a relatively long pause — until the middle of 2022, to be precise — before Tesla sold 29,160 BTC, leaving only 9,720 in its holdings.
This remained the stable amount for over two years until it was revealed at the end of 2024 that the company had purchased an additional 1,789 BTC, bringing its total to 11,509.
However, Tesla’s holdings have continued to lose value since then as the price of BTC has suffered.
It described this purchase as an “immaterial amount.”
Musk has not wholly moved on from Bitcoin.
Despite previously claiming that Tesla cannot accept it because of “rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for BTC mining,” last year he promoted the asset by stating, “That is why Bitcoin is based on energy: you can issue fake fiat currency, and every government in history has done so, but it is impossible to fake energy.”
BTC has fallen by over 40% since Musk made this point.
Broadly, it’s not entirely clear what Musk or Tesla thinks of BTC, whether it is a powerful alternative to fiat or a threat to the environment.
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