By
Godfrey Benjamin
May 8th, 2024
In the company’s letter to investors, Tesla executives stated that the company sold 75% of its Bitcoin holdings, adding $936 million in cash to its balance sheet.
Bitcoin price saw a spike in price in the early stages of yesterday and looked like it was finally about to break out, briefly climbing above $24,300, before falling again before the end of the official trading day. The Bitcoin price at press time was trading at $22,895, down 2.03% in the last 24 hours. BTC hot run ended after Tesla Q2 2022 financial report revealed that the company sold 75% of its Bitcoin holdings.
The price of Bitcoin dropped from its daily high of $24,280 to $22,900 shortly after the Tesla news emerged before stabilizing around $23,500.
Following the release of its second-quarter vehicle shipment data, Tesla released its complete Q2 2022 financial report, the electric vehicle manufacturer revealed that it is battling inflation, the general economic slump, as well as a decline in the price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
In the company’s letter to investors, Tesla executives stated that the company sold 75% of its Bitcoin holdings, adding $936 million in cash to its balance sheet.
Tesla announced it would take Bitcoin as payment last year and invested $1.5 billion in the cryptocurrency. The company began accepting payments in Bitcoin in the latter stages of March, before abruptly reversing that decision, just 49 days later.
The value of Tesla’s remaining digital assets which it had previously projected to be worth almost $1.2 billion, is now $218 million, according to the latest financial report.
Billionaire investor and CEO of the company, Elon Musk, speaking on the company’s Bitcoin investment in July last year, stated “I might pump, but I don’t dump,” putting all doubts about the company hodling BTC to bed.
“I do not believe in getting the price high and selling or anything like that. I would like to see Bitcoin succeed,” he added.
Musk, during an investor call, defended the company’s latest actions, stating that the selloff should not be received as some verdict on Bitcoin. According to the CEO, the company sold off a chunk of its Bitcoin holdings because it was “concerned about overall liquidity of the company given COVID shutdowns in China.” “Tesla needed the cash. We have not sold any of our Dogecoin,” he stated.
Minecraft creator Mojang Studios, also announced yesterday that it was going back on its word by deciding to ban NFTs on its platform. According to Mojang, there are numerous concerns related to NFTs and using Minecraft to create and distribute them, including fraud, security issues as well as establishing a precedent of haves and have-nots on Minecraft servers.
The Bitcoin price pullback, just like most times, took many altcoins along for the ride. Although Bitcoin’s price drop was relatively mild, several altcoins recorded much deeper losses.
Polygon saw an 11.5% loss following a week in which the token value increased by 87% whiles Arweave (AR) saw its token price fall by 10.84%, with Filecoin (FIL) also recording a pullback of 10.2%.