For the fourth time this year, Elon Musk has sold Tesla shares worth billions. The crypto community is puzzling over whether and what implications this could have on his Bitcoin and Dogecoin holdings, or even Tesla’s BTC holdings.
Musk sold $3.58 billion worth of shares from Monday to Wednesday, a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission reveals. What Musk plans to use the money for is currently unclear. Naturally, the crypto community speculates about what will happen with the cash. Since Musk announced the now-completed acquisition of Twitter in April 2022, the entrepreneur has parted with $23 billion worth of Tesla shares.
The funds from previous Tesla stock sales likely went toward the Twitter acquisition, which ended up costing Musk $44 billion. This expensive takeover has also not been rosy for the billionaire. In recent weeks, the Tesla CEO has faced harsh criticism from the mainstream media. Some major companies stopped advertising on Twitter.
Because of this, there has been a sharp loss of revenue, Musk admitted. But Tesla’s share value has also fallen by more than half since April. Many investors fear Musk is getting so hogged on Twitter that he’s losing focus on Tesla.
“That doesn’t inspire confidence in the company and speaks volumes about where his attention is,” said Tony Sycamore, an analyst at brokerage IG Markets.
Tesla stock’s performance is surprisingly similar to Bitcoin’s. While Tesla stock has lost -58.13% year-to-date, the BTC price has fallen -60.29% YTD.
Will Elon Musk Buy Bitcoin Or Dogecoin?
Even though many bitcoin investors see the current situation as a good opportunity to buy Bitcoin cheaply, it is not known if Elon Musk or Tesla shares this opinion.
Currently, there is no BTC on-chain data to suggest such an action. Musk using his Tesla shares to purchase Dogecoin also seems very unlikely. Otherwise, there would probably have to be a massive pump of the DOGE price. Whether Tesla will buy the BTC dip will not be known until its Q4 earnings report, which is due on January 25, 2023. Tesla has already sold 75% of its Bitcoin holdings.
Its remaining holdings are currently estimated at 10,500 BTC. As the electric carmaker revealed in its latest earnings report, the company neither sold its BTC holdings nor purchased additional Bitcoin in the third quarter of 2022.
Musk said in a second-quarter earnings conference call that the latest sale of Tesla’s BTC stash occurred because of the uncertainty of COVID blocks in China. Remarkably, he noted that Tesla is open to increasing its BTC exposure in the future.
At press time, the BTC price stood at $17,724 and was rejected at key resistance at $18,220.
