Did Tesla buy Bitcoin again?
On March 7, according to Arkham data, Tesla's bitcoin holdings reached 11,509, which means that if the data statistics are correct, Tesla has purchased Bitcoin again after many years.
Prior to this, Tesla’s holdings of 9,720 BTC already made it the third-largest public holder of the asset, behind only software company
MicroStrategy (MSTR) and mining company Marathon
(MARA). It is reported that Tesla sold 4,320 bitcoins in 2021 and 29,160 bitcoins in 2022, and its bitcoin holdings remained at 9,720 bitcoins in 2023. Now, Tesla has increased its holdings by 1,789 bitcoins using the same address, bringing its holdings to 11,509.
However, according to monitoring, the last transaction record of Tesla's wallet of 11,509 BTC was two years ago. In January this year, CoinDesk reported that according to Tesla's financial report, its Bitcoin holdings have not changed in the past three months. Tesla officials have not updated the number of Bitcoins they have increased their holdings, and the official interface still shows 9,720.
If Arkham’s on-chain tracking is accurate, Tesla is likely to announce the increase in holdings in its next earnings report.
"ETF in the last bull market", Tesla once spent $1.5 billion to buy Bitcoin
Tesla's first Bitcoin purchase transaction took place in February 2021. In an announcement submitted by Tesla to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the company had purchased $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin and said it expected to begin accepting Bitcoin as a payment method for its cars and other products soon. At the time, the price of Bitcoin was less than $39,000. After being reported by the media, the price of Bitcoin continued to soar, reaching more than $50,000.
At that time, Tesla's huge purchase was not optimistic. The Financial Times quoted Campbell Harvey of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, as saying that Tesla's acquisition of Bitcoin was "unusual" and "risky" and could not hedge against market uncertainty. If Bitcoin is realized as a payment method, Tesla will become the first large enterprise to truly accept Bitcoin payments.
On May 13, 2021, Elon Musk, then CEO of Tesla, suddenly announced that Tesla would no longer accept Bitcoin payments, less than two months after they announced support for Bitcoin payments. Bitcoin fell 15% in response, once falling to $46,000, and the entire network was liquidated with more than $2 billion.
In the late first quarter of 2021, Tesla sold 10% of its Bitcoin at a high point, adding $272 million to its earnings for the quarter, and still holds $1.33 billion in Bitcoin. During the 2021 bear market, Tesla did not make any more purchases or sales of Bitcoin.
In 2022, after Bitcoin began to collapse, Tesla wrote down its Bitcoin holdings and sold nearly 30,000 Bitcoins for $936 million, accounting for about 75% of its holdings. Tesla CEO Musk said in a financial report conference call that the sale of Bitcoin was only intended to improve the cash situation and "not a ruling on Bitcoin." He also revealed to the media that he bought Bitcoin because he was "concerned that Bitcoin mining business consumes fossil fuels."
Whether Tesla actually bought Bitcoin again will have to wait until its next financial report to find out.
