Tesla released its second quarter 2023 financial report on Wednesday (July 19), showing that the net value of the company's Bitcoin holdings is about $184 million. Since the second quarter of 2022, CEO Elon Musk has not sold his Bitcoin reserves, and has weathered the cold winter with the crypto market, and ushered in a rebound of $30,000 this year. The market expects that as the price of the currency recovers, Tesla is likely to resume buying Bitcoin after the halving begins in April next year.
As of the end of the second quarter of this year, the price of Bitcoin was about $30,400, up from about $28,500 at the end of the first quarter. However, current accounting rules do not allow the valuation of digital assets to increase when prices rise unless the assets are sold, but when prices fall, the valuation of digital assets can be reduced even before they are sold.
Tesla has not bought or sold any Bitcoin since the second quarter of 2022, when it sold more than 30,000 Bitcoins, about 75% of its holdings, for $936 million.
The company initially purchased $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin in early 2021, and Musk also said Tesla would accept Bitcoin as a payment method for its cars, boosting Bitcoin prices.
But Musk eventually retracted the statement, citing the environmental problems caused by Bitcoin's high energy consumption as the reason.
In late October 2021, Bitcoin soared to an all-time high of approximately $69,000, a historical figure that remains unbeaten to this day.
FactSet data showed that Tesla's second-quarter adjusted earnings per share were $0.91, while analysts generally expected $0.80. Revenue reached $24.9 billion, exceeding analysts' expectations of $24.2 billion. In after-hours trading on Wednesday, the stock rose 1% to $288.96, and the stock price has risen more than 136% this year.
Bitcoin is down nearly 5% this week and is currently changing hands at just over $30,000. CoinTelegraph reported that some traders expect Bitcoin prices to revisit around $27,500 in the coming days after failing to sustain resistance at $30,000.
RIZZO, a well-known cryptocurrency Twitter community member, pointed out that Tesla still holds about 10,000 bitcoins. Crypto market investors are beginning to wonder whether Tesla plans to buy more bitcoins soon, or at least after the bitcoin halving in April-May next year, just like Musk's layout strategy in 2015.
Musk's path to crypto payments is not completely blocked. In early 2022, Tesla tried to sell its products in Dogecoin (DOGE), Musk's favorite meme coin. Later that year, SpaceX followed suit, and both events led to a rise in the price of Dogecoin. That fall, Musk launched his limited edition perfume Burnt Hair.
One option is to buy it with cryptocurrency through the BitPay crypto payment processor, which is compatible with at least a dozen coins, including Bitcoin, Dogecoin and Shiba Inucoin. In a short period of time, 10,000 bottles of perfume were quickly sold, showing that Musk's traffic in the cryptocurrency circle remains high.