American car manufacturing company Tesla has announced that it plans to hold on to its $218 million in Bitcoin (BTC). The vehicle manufacturing company is one of the largest institutional adopters of BTC.
The Q3 report from Tesla, released on 19 October, shows $218 million worth of digital assets on its balance sheet. Based on the current price of BTC, Tesla’s holdings may amount to around 9,720 BTC.
The report comes months after Tesla’s nearly $1 billion sell-off, citing the need for liquidity amid Covid-related uncertainty in its Chinese operations. The sell-off wiped away a significant chunk of the company’s $1.5 billion BTC holdings. Tesla also stated that it sold 75% of its Bitcoin during the second quarter of the year. It added $936 million to its books at the time, according to its estimates.
Despite these sell-offs, Tesla stands second among the world’s largest corporate holders of Bitcoin, retaining its position from last year. MicroStrategy, with the highest holdings from all corporations, has 130,000 BTC (around $2.48 billion), and Galaxy Digital Holdings has 16,400 BTC (about $313 million). The Michael Saylor-led company’s record too was despite them losing their investment in BTC earlier this year.
In the past few years, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has made his support for another crypto, Dogecoin (DOGE), pretty public. Under Musk, Tesla even started accepting DOGE payments for a range of merchandise, and the CEO’s rocket-building company SpaceX followed suit. The latest development seems to reaffirm that commitment toward crypto.
Overall for Q3 2022, Tesla posted $3.3 billion in profits attaining revenues of $21.45 billion, despite falling short of analyst expectations.
Meanwhile, shedding over 60% of its last year’s November all-time high of $69,000, BTC is struggling to stay above the first resistance level of $19,000 at publishing time.
