Tesla has sold 75% of its bitcoin holding, according to an SEC filing.
Tesla has sold 75% of its bitcoin holding, according to an SEC filing made public on October 26th. The company’s sale comes after a steep drop in the cryptocurrency’s value, which saw it lose more than half its value since the beginning of the year. Tesla first bought into the crypto market in 2017, when it purchased $10 million worth of Bitcoin through a series of transactions made between December 2017 and January 2018. At the time, Bitcoin was trading at around $14,000 per coin. By November 2018, however, that number had dropped to just under $4,000.
Although Tesla said in a blog post that it had never intended to hold onto the cryptocurrency for long-term investment purposes and would instead use it as a way to pay for parts and services from other companies within the industry as well as buy products from consumers directly through their website (such as charging stations), this isn’t Tesla’s first attempt at using Bitcoin to pay for goods and services.
