Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX and CEO of Tesla, salutes as he arrives for a discussion at the 2020 Satellite Conference in Washington, DC, on Monday, March 9, 2020.
Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | fake images
Tesla CEO Elon Musk hinted in a Twitter exchange Sunday afternoon that the electric vehicle maker sold or may sell the rest of its bitcoin holdings, driving the price of the cryptocurrency down.
Bitcoin is down more than 5% to around $ 45,100 per coin.
One Twitter user calling himself @CryptoWhale said: “Bitcoiners will slap each other next quarter when they find out that Tesla abandoned the rest of their holdings. With the amount of hate @Elon Musk he’s getting it, I wouldn’t blame him … ”
Musk replied “Indeed.”
Musk has been a huge supporter of cryptocurrencies, helping drive up the prices of digital currencies, including bitcoin, several times over the past year. In an SEC filing in February, Tesla revealed that it bought $ 1.5 billion worth of bitcoins. Later, the company said it posted a net profit of $ 101 million from bitcoin sales for the quarter, which helped push its net profit to a record in the first quarter.
However, Musk seems to have changed course in recent weeks in favor of dogecoin, the meme-inspired cryptocurrency. Last week, Tesla also “suspended bitcoin vehicle purchases” due to concerns about “the increasing use of fossil fuels for bitcoin mining.” The price of bitcoin fell around 5% in the first few minutes after Musk’s announcement.
A potential sale comes just days after Musk said the company planned to hold onto rather than sell the bitcoin it already has and that it intended to use it for transactions as soon as mining shifts to more sustainable energy.
