Musk’s electric car company transferred close to two-thirds of a billion worth of bitcoin out of its wallet, leaving less than $7 in the bank.
Famous electric car manufacturer run by Elon Musk, Tesla, has emptied its Bitcoin wallet, transferring about $765 million worth of BTC to numerous wallets. It presently holds about $6 in BTC.
Arkham Intelligence shows that the wallet conducted 26 transactions, including test transactions, to move its funds. The wallet remained inactive since January 2022 until the transactions began on October 15 at 8:41 UTC.
Tesla’s BTC stash made it the fourth biggest publicly traded BTC holder, behind MicroStrategy, which is an obvious first on the list, and miners Marathon Digital and Riot Platforms. It is not certain anymore if Tesla still controls the assets—if it does, it remains in the fourth spot; otherwise, no.
“TESLA MOVING BITCOIN FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 2 YEARS,” Arkham Intelligence posted on X. A user pointed out that the transactions could be due to the company consolidating its UTXOs. Holding assets across wallets can accumulate many UTXOs—unspent transactions. That leads to increased fee amounts. The user offered insight into why they thought this was a consolidation attempt, which has to do with the recipient wallets showcasing legacy addresses. That could imply Tesla is not moving its BTC to exchanges but rather consolidating.
Tesla’s Ties to BTC
The company first came into possession of BTC in 2021 when it bought a whopping $1.5 billion of the asset. A month later, it sold 4,320 BTC, followed by a sale of 29,160 BTC as the next year rolled in. Tesla has not had much activity tied to BTC since the recent transactions.
In March 2021, Musk announced that customers could buy Tesla’s vehicles with BTC. That was around the same time the company bought the $1.5 billion worth of BTC. “You can now buy a Tesla with Bitcoin,” Musk’s March 24, 2021, X post, then called a tweet, read. “Bitcoin paid to Tesla will be retained as Bitcoin, not converted to fiat currency.” While this was big news in and beyond crypto circles, with people expressing their excitement, the man wanting to colonize Mars backtracked the decision a few weeks later.
Musk’s other company, SpaceX, holds 8,285 BTC, making it the seventh largest holding by any private firm. Whether Tesla’s spot for having the fourth biggest holding as a public firm remains can be found out on October 23 when it releases its third-quarter financials.
