Tesla’s Bitcoin bet hasn’t gone all that great.
In its earnings report for the second quarter of 2022, the company revealed it has sold three quarters of its Bitcoin holdings.
“As of the end of Q2, we have converted approximately 75% of our Bitcoin purchases into fiat currency. Conversions in Q2 added $936M of cash to our balance sheet,” says Tesla’s latest shareholder deck.
Tesla invested roughly $1.5 billion in Bitcoin back in 2021. If selling 75% of that netted $936 million in cash, that means the company lost roughly $189 million on its Bitcoin bet (so far), which isn’t even that bad given how low the price of Bitcoin went earlier this year.
Shortly after its Bitcoin purchase, Tesla said it would start accepting bitcoins as payment for its cars. That lasted only a couple of months, though CEO Elon Musk did say Tesla would resume Bitcoin purchases when the cryptocurrency gets greener. Notably, Musk said at the time that “Tesla will not be selling any Bitcoin.”
During the company’s earnings call Wednesday, Musk said Tesla sold the bitcoins to “maximize [its] cash position,” which was important to do “given the uncertainty of COVID lockdowns in China.” He also said that the company’s decision to sell Bitcoin should not be taken as “some verdict” on the cryptocurrency, and that Tesla remains open to buy Bitcoin again in the future.
There’s good news for fans of Dogecoin, though, as Musk said on the earnings call that the company hasn’t sold any of the DOGE it owns. Tesla started accepting the cryptocurrency for some of its merch in January 2022, and later expanded that to accept DOGE at some Supercharger stations. There’s no telling how much Dogecoin Tesla owns, though. According to the shareholder deck, the company still has $218 million in “digital assets,” though the bulk of that has to be Bitcoin.
