Author: Shaurya Malwa, CoinDesk; Translated by: Deng Tong, Golden Finance
Tesla moved its bitcoin reserves for the first time in more than two years on Wednesday, shocking some bitcoin traders.
But so far, apparently no Bitcoin is available for use in exchange wallets or traded for stablecoins.
Here are some reasons why a company might move digital assets.
Elon Musk-controlled Tesla (TSLA) caused a stir earlier this week when it moved more than $750 million worth of Bitcoin (BTC) to new wallets after the company’s bitcoins remained untouched for nearly two years.
This action has sparked discussion around Tesla/Musk's intentions and concerns about further selling pressure.
The electric car maker was the fourth-largest corporate holder of Bitcoin at the time of the move about 40 hours ago, with about 10,000 tokens, according to BitcoinTreasuries data. Tesla increased its stake in 2021 and sold a large portion of it during the 2022 bear market.
Data available from Arkham Intelligence on Wednesday showed bitcoin had moved to new wallets rather than to any exchange, allaying early concerns of a massive sell-off. Tesla or Musk have yet to comment publicly on the move, but more details are likely to come when the company reports third-quarter earnings results early next week.
CryptoQuant community analyst Maartunn pointed out in an interview on Thursday that the current reasons are limited to speculation, ranging from wallet management to reorganization:
Compliance or Internal Audit: Tesla may transfer Bitcoin to satisfy accounting or legal obligations related to reporting or internal audits.
Wallet management: Tesla may use multiple wallets for operational purposes. This seems unlikely because the newly created addresses use similar Pay-to-PubKey-Hash (P2PKH) addresses.
Restructuring Fund: This could be part of a strategy to restructure Bitcoin holdings in anticipation of future sales or loans, similar to Mt. Gox. However, such speculation should be avoided until there is evidence of a sale (e.g. a transfer to Coinbase). This is not currently the case.
Another possible reason for the social media buzz could be the consolidation of UTXOs (Unspent Transaction Outputs), which is the process of combining multiple UTXOs into one or fewer UTXOs. UTXOs can be considered as separate unspent amounts of any tokens waiting to be used in future transactions.
Each UTXO used in a transaction increases the transaction size, which can result in higher fees since miners are charged based on the data size of the transaction. Consolidation reduces the inputs for future transactions, potentially reducing costs and increasing the speed of larger transactions in the future.
