Elon Musk has hinted that Tesla could have dumped the remainder of its Bitcoin holdings in a cryptic tweet posted on Sunday afternoon.
Tesla bought about $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin back in February, around the time it announced it would accept the cryptocurrency as payment for its products.
However, it was revealed earlier this week that the company sold off about $272million in Bitcoin during Q1 of this year.
On Wednesday, Tesla also announced that it would no longer accept Bitcoin as payment, citing environmental concerns.
The announcement caused the value of Bitcoin to drop dramatically in the wake of that news.
The cryptocurrency was selling for around $56,000 on Wednesday morning. As of Sunday afternoon, its price was $45,300, according to Musk's latest cryptic tweet may further manipulate the price of Bitcoin.
The billionaire responded Sunday afternoon to a Twitter account which wrote: 'Bitcoiners are going to slap themselves next quarter when they find out Tesla dumped the rest of their #Bitcoin holdings. With the amount of hate @elonmusk is getting, I wouldn't blame him'
Musk cryptically replied: 'Indeed'.
Elon Musk has hinted that Tesla has dumped the remainder of its Bitcoin holdings in a cryptic tweet posted on Sunday afternoon
Musk's latest cryptic tweet may further manipulate the price of Bitcoin. The billionaire responded Sunday afternoon to a Twitter account which claimed he would be selling off all Bitcoin holdings
The cryptocurrency was selling for around $56,000 on Wednesday morning. As of Sunday afternoon, its price is $45,300, according to Google data.
Tesla still has more than $1.2 billion worth of Bitcoin, according to calculations based on its most recent earnings statements.
The company sold off hundreds of millions of dollars worth of the cryptocurrency in the first business quarter of 2021, reportedly making up 23 percent of Tesla's earnings for that three month period.
Had it not been for the sale of its Bitcoin, the company would have missed out on its earning target for the quarter, NYU business professor Scott Galloway on Friday.
Bitcoin, the world's biggest digital currency, has surged five-fold in the past year alone. The rise comes amid an increasingly fraught debate over the environmental costs of the world's most popular cryptocurrency.
Crypto is 'mined' by high-powered computers that require huge amounts of energy to continuously solve computational math puzzles. With each solved problem, a certain amount of coin is produced.
While the machines use electricity, fossil fuel is a major category in electricity generation.
Environmentalists argue that the creation of the cryptocurrency may harm efforts to limit global warming.