During periods of sharp price declines, some investors liquidate their cryptos to avoid losses. But, this is not the case for everyone. Some believe so strongly in the potential of crypto that they hold on to their tokens through thick and thin. This seems to be the case with Elon Musk whose company Tesla did not abandon Bitcoin during the 2022 bear market.
Tesla retained 9,720 BTC in Q4 2022
Elon Musk’s Tesla, who is also the boss of Twitter, did not sell its bitcoins in the last quarter of last year. Still, it was a period of bear market hardening, with plenty of turbulence including the collapse of FTX. Thereby, throughout the fourth trimester of 2022, the company has retained all of its 9,720 bitcoins. That’s what has revealed Tesla’s fourth quarter and full year 2022 earnings report.
Financial data from Tesla highlights that Musk’s company neither bought nor sold bitcoin during that time. Obviously, the fall in the price of BTC still made him incur losses. But, these only amounted to $34 million by the end of 2022.
Concretely, Tesla held $184 million in digital assets as of December 31, 2022. Yet, in the prior quarter, the company totaled $218 million in cryptos.
The company had sold its holdings in the second quarter
The EV maker hasn’t always been careful to hold on to its BTC holdings despite the turmoil. Indeed, Tesla had disposed of 75% of its holdings in the second quarter. At the time, the sale of BTC allowed him to add $936 million in cash to his accounts.
Musk’s company got an estimated $64 million in gains from the deal. During the period of the bitcoin sale, Elon Musk said that the transaction had a purpose. It made it possible to verify that bitcoin can be an alternative for having liquidity in a balance sheet.
Tesla’s financial data reveals that it made $5.7 billion in profit during the fourth quarter of 2022. Its revenue over that period is estimated at $24.3 billion. At the same time, for the whole of 2022, Tesla earned $20.8 million in profits. The latter were carried out on an estimated turnover of 81.4 billion dollars.
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