Elon Musk apparently isn’t trying to hold Tesla’s bitcoin during a crypto winter.
The electric car manufacturer disclosed during its Q2 earnings report that 75% of its Bitcoin assets were liquidated this quarter. For $963 million, the business sold the coins.
According to Tesla, its remaining “digital assets” are worth $218 million.
The business revealed in February of last year that it had spent $1.5 billion of its balance sheet cash to buy the cryptocurrency and would soon accept Bitcoin as payment for its vehicles. With that announcement, the cryptocurrency markets went into a frenzy, driving up the price of several cryptocurrencies and establishing Musk as the de facto leader of the industry.
Much of that goodwill with the community was later undone when he abruptly stated that they were abandoning plans to accept cryptocurrency payments.
The company’s decline follows a sharp drop in the cost of all cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin and Dogecoin, which Musk has personally backed in his social media posts and in his capacity as CEO of Tesla.
The company’s leadership stated during an earnings call that the sale was made in order to maximize cash holdings during the unpredictability of China’s COVID lockdowns.
“We are certainly open to increasing bitcoin holdings in future. So this should not be taken as some verdict on Bitcoin. It’s just that we were concerned about overall liquidity for the company given COVID shutdowns in China,” Tesla CFO Zachary Kirkhorn said.
At the time of writing in after-hours trading, the company’s Q2 results report, which exceeded estimates with a profit of $2.26 billion, had little impact on the stock price.
