Tesla (TSLA) must be feeling pretty good about its move into cryptocurrency holding, as its stake in Bitcoin is already up by $1 billion.
Tesla and Bitcoin
Over the last year, Tesla has been delving deep into the cryptocurrency world. Earlier this year, Tesla invested $1.5 billion in Bitcoin. Shortly after, the automaker started accepting the cryptocurrency as payment on new vehicles.
Later, CEO Elon Musk even talked about the potential of Tesla starting to accept Dogecoin as payment for its vehicles.
However, a few days later, Tesla took a step back with crypto by removing the Bitcoin payment option. The company noted concerns over the energy needs of the Bitcoin network:
Tesla has suspended vehicle purchases using Bitcoin. We are concerned about rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal, which has the worst emissions of any fuel.
This is a concern that many Tesla community members shared when Tesla first announced its Bitcoin investment, and many were angered by the fact that the company didn’t think about it in the first place.
At the time, Tesla noted that they were not selling their stake in Bitcoin and that they planned to resume taking Bitcoin payments once the network shows a higher mix of renewable energy. Earlier this summer, Musk said that he believes Tesla will resume taking Bitcoin payment as he sees improvements in the energy mix of Bitcoin mining.
Already $1 billion increase in value
As usual, Bitcoin’s value has been fluctuating widely, but it has recently settled to around $58,000 over the last few days.
It put Tesla’s position of roughly 43,200 BTC at about $2.5 billion, which means that the stake has already increased in value by $1 billion, as first noted by Bitcoin Magazine.
The automaker’s goal with its cryptocurrency stake is to have an alternative to holding money as its cash reserve grows.
Tesla is one of the biggest companies to have made this move and many cryptocurrency analysts expect more blue-chip companies to follow.
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