Tesla recently transferred $770 million worth of Bitcoin holdings to new digital addresses. The transactions were Tesla’s entire Bitcoin holdings of 11,509 BTC and occurred over a few days. The last time Tesla touched its Bitcoin wallets was 2022.
According to Yahoo Finance, Tesla is the third-largest Bitcoin holder among public companies. The other two public companies with large Bitcoin holdings are MicroStrategy and MARA, formerly Marathon Digital. Elon Musk’s SpaceX company also holds Bitcoin, amounting to about 8,285 coins.
In early 2021, a filing with SEC revealed that Tesla had invested $1.5 billion in Bitcoin. For a little while, Tesla also accepted Bitcoin payments for its vehicles, but it was ultimately suspended.
At the time, Tesla’s former Chief Financial Officer Zachary Kirkhorn explain the company’s decision to invest in Bitcoin.
“And so where our bitcoin story began, maybe just to share a little bit of context here. Elon and I were looking for a place to store cash that wasn’t being immediately used, trying to get some level of return on this, but also preserve liquidity.
“Particularly as we look forward to the launch of Austin and Berlin and uncertainty that’s happening with semiconductors and port capacity, being able to access our cash very quickly is super important to us right now. And there aren’t many traditional opportunities to do this or at least that we found and in talking to others that we could get good feedback on, particularly with yields being so low and without taking on additional risk or sacrificing liquidity,” Kirkhorn said.
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