Tesla, a tech company led by well-known crypto enthusiast Elon Musk, has bought $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin and plans to add support for BTC as a form of payment in the near future, according to its filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) published today.
“Thereafter, we invested an aggregate $1.50 billion in bitcoin under this policy,” revealed Tesla’s Form 10-K.
The company explained that its investment policy was updated in January 2021 to provide “more flexibility to further diversify and maximize returns on our cash that is not required to maintain adequate operating liquidity.” As part of this revised policy, Tesla said that it “may invest a portion of such cash in certain specified alternative reserve assets.”
Additionally, the company expects to begin accepting Bitcoin as payment for its products in the future.
“Moreover, we expect to begin accepting bitcoin as a form of payment for our products in the near future, subject to applicable laws and initially on a limited basis, which we may or may not liquidate upon receipt,” the document noted.
At press time, Bitcoin is trading at around $42,600, up 9.2% on the day.
However, Elon Musk has recently demonstrated that he has a notable influence on the crypto market. Recently, when Musk changed his bio section on Twitter to include just one word—”Bitcoin”—the BTC’s price surged by nearly 20%.
In another instance, a single tweet from him with the word “Doge” was enough to pump “meme cryptocurrency” Dogecoin by nearly 80% last week. Even today, another one of Musk’s tweets catalyzed DOGE’s surge by 50%.
Speaking to CryptoSlate, Konstantin Anissimov, executive director of crypto exchange CEX.IO, noted that the market has reacted to the news lightning-fast, showing “how great the growth potential of this asset is.”
“Everything goes to the fact that the upward trend in BTC/USD will be continued by a new wave of growth, which in February may raise this trading pair to $50,000,” Anissimov told CryptoSlate, adding, “But we consider $48,051 as the closest target mark. This is an approximate figure based on operational technical analysis. Therefore, if Tesla is followed by a new wave of investing in bitcoin from the corporate segment, this level can be overcome very quickly.”
While it is commendable that Musk has literally put his money where his mouth is, couldn’t his unprecedented influence on the crypto market now be perceived as a conflict of interest?
The article was updated to include additional details.
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