Tesla keeps holding $184M worth of digital assets on its balance sheet

Crypto holdings unchanged for third straight quarter after car manufacturer sold off majority of bitcoin last year

July 19, 2023 04:48 pm

Tesla CEO Elon Musk | Naga11/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks

Tesla’s digital asset holdings did not change in the second quarter as the electric car manufacturer maintained $184 million on its balance sheet.

The value of the holdings, as of June 30, stayed flat — despite bitcoin’s price rise during the quarter — due to accounting rules that don’t allow for unrealized gains on crypto to be recorded.

The price of bitcoin rose roughly 7% during the second quarter, contributing to year-to-date gains of about 80%.

Tesla reported buying $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin in February 2021. The company said at the time it would start accepting the asset as a form of payment, but CEO Elon Musk later backtracked on those statements, citing environmental concerns.

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Musk’s company sold roughly 75% of its bitcoin stack during the second quarter of 2022 lowering the total to $218 million worth of digital assets on its balance sheet.

“We are certainly open to increasing our bitcoin holdings in the future, so this should not be taken as some verdict on bitcoin,” Musk said during the company’s July 2022 earnings call.

The company reduced its digital asset holdings from $218 million to $184 million during the fourth quarter of that year. Tesla has since maintained that level for the final quarter of 2022 and the first three months of 2023.

Those holdings remained unchanged in the second quarter, according to financial statements published Wednesday.

Musk has acknowledged his fondness for dogecoin (DOGE), even changing Twitter’s logo to that of dogecoin’s in April.

Investor Keith Johnson filed a $258 billion lawsuit against Musk in June 2022, alleging his involvement in a pyramid scheme designed to manipulate the price of DOGE. Musk’s lawyers have said there is nothing illegal about tweeting support for a crypto asset that, as of Wednesday, had a market capitalization of nearly $10 billion.

Musk broke his silence on crypto during the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit in May.

“I’m not advising anyone to buy crypto or bet the farm on dogecoin,” Musk said.

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