Tesla Moves 11,500 Bitcoins to Unknown Wallets: What’s Behind the Move?

Tesla's Bitcoin holdings are on the move after two years of inactivity. On Tuesday, wallets associated with Elon Musk's electric car company transferred over 11,500 Bitcoin (approximately $765 million) to wallets whose ownership remains unknown, according to crypto data firm Arkham Intelligence. As a result, the Tesla wallets now hold just about $6.65 worth of BTC—essentially negligible.

The new wallets do not appear to be linked to any crypto exchanges, so there’s no immediate indication that Tesla plans to sell the Bitcoin. While Musk's companies, including Tesla and SpaceX, hold Bitcoin on their balance sheets, it's unclear how much Musk personally believes in the cryptocurrency. In a July interview broadcast on YouTube, he stated that he thinks there is some merit in Bitcoin, and maybe some other crypto, but noted that his soft spot is for Dogecoin (DOGE).

Tesla is currently the fourth-largest holder of Bitcoin among publicly traded U.S. companies, following MicroStrategy and bitcoin mining firms Marathon Digital Holdings and Riot Platforms. The company first revealed in 2020 that it had acquired $1.5 billion in Bitcoin but didn’t maintain that amount for long. It sold about 10% of its holdings in Q1 2021 and then offloaded approximately 75% of the remaining stock in July 2022 when Bitcoin's price was significantly lower, around $24,000, compared to the all-time high of nearly $69,000 reached in November 2021. Since then, the value of Bitcoin has surged, currently sitting at about $67,000.

Tesla's relationship with Bitcoin has been mixed. In 2021, the company announced it would accept Bitcoin payments for its vehicles but retracted that decision just two months later, citing concerns over Bitcoin mining's environmental impact.

Musk, a vocal supporter of the meme coin Dogecoin, mentioned that Tesla would reconsider accepting Bitcoin payments once a majority of Bitcoin mining is powered by renewable energy, but that has yet to happen.