Elon Musk’s Tesla Just Sold Some of Its Bitcoins: Find Out Why

Elon Musk said Tesla had sold 10 percent of its Bitcoin holdings to demonstrate the cryptocurrency's liquidity on balance sheet, while he has retained his personal Bitcoin investment. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO was responding to a tweet by Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy, who questioned Musk's sale of Bitcoins and said that he had bought the cryptocurrency and made a fortune by selling it a higher price. Portnoy's tweet came after Tesla stated in its first-quarter earnings report on Monday that it had sold $272 million (roughly Rs. 2,030 crores) worth of its Bitcoin holdings.

Here's how the exchange on Twitter between Portnoy and Musk unfolded. In response to Portnoy's question if he was “understanding this correctly”, that Musk “buys #bitcoin. Then he pumps it. It goes up. Then he dumps it and makes a fortune”, the Tesla CEO tweeted, “No, you do not. I have not sold any of my Bitcoin. Tesla sold 10 percent of its holdings essentially to prove liquidity of Bitcoin as an alternative to holding cash on balance sheet.”

Elon Musk has been a big supporter of Bitcoin as well as Dogecoin. Time and again, his tweets have sent the value of these two cryptocurrencies soaring. While in February, a series of tweets by Musk, hailing Dogecoin, took the value of the meme-based cryptocurrency to wild levels, in March the value of Bitcoin rose to a then all-time high of $60,000 (roughly Rs. 45 lakhs) after he announced that Tesla would accept the cryptocurrency as a mode of payment.

A month ago, in February, the company had also invested $1.5 billion (roughly Rs. 11,200 crores) in Bitcoin.

Before that, in January, the value of Bitcoin surged after Musk added the hashtag #bitcoin to his Twitter bio, and also sent out a cryptic tweet, saying, “In retrospect, it was inevitable.”

However, of late, the value of both these cryptocurrencies have slumped. On Tuesday (at the time of writing), the value of Bitcoin was $53,474.20 (roughly Rs. 40 lakhs). The cryptocurrency had hit an all-time high of $64,804.72 (roughly Rs. 48 lakhs) on April 9.

Similarly, Dogecoin's crash began on April 21, a day after fans of the cryptocurrency celebrated Doge Day. At the time of writing, Dogecoin's price was around $0.266308 (roughly Rs. 20). On April 16, the value of the cryptocurrency had soared to an all-time high of $0.45 (roughly Rs. 35).