Elon Musk has been proactive and a big advocate of cryptocurrency since the start, especially of Dogecoin. However, Musk’s Tesla has been reported to be one of the biggest hodler of Bitcoin.
Per a report released by Tesla on October 19, the company holds about $218 million in Bitcoin. The company’s holdings have been recorded to be unchanged in the third quarter of 2022 compared to the second quarter.
Earlier this year, Tesla’s earning report estimated its Bitcoin holding worth to be $1.26 billion at that time. The company later announced it sold about 75% of its total Bitcoin holding, valued at around $936 million. However, even after the sale at the end of June, the company was reported to hold digital assets worth $222 million on its balance sheet.
During the investor call for the second quarter of 2022, Musk, while explaining the company’s sale of 75% of Bitcoin holdings, cited the situation of the expected lockdown in China. He said that the Bitcoin at that time was converted to cash to tackle the continuous lockdowns in China due to the Covid-19 pandemic. They had to expand their cash position at that time, considering the unpredictability of the tenure of the lockdowns in that phase.
However, despite Tesla’s massive sale of Bitcoin holdings, it remains one of the largest publicly traded companies to hold Bitcoin after MicroStrategy ($2.48 billion) and Galaxy Digital Holdings ($313 million).
Musk has also been a big name in the crypto industry due to his irreplaceable influence over it. He even openly mocked Warren Buffett’s criticism of Bitcoin and even decided to accept Bitcoin for Tesla cars. However, after backlash from environmentalists for allegedly promoting heavy energy consumption, he soon reversed the decision.
Recently, Musk has been cited as responsible for the spiked interest of investors in Dogecoin following his expected purchase of Twitter and the integration of blockchain and cryptocurrency in it, as reported by Todayq.