You might think of Elon Musk as a savvy entrepreneur, and at the end of the day, you typically don't get to become the world's richest man without some clever investments. Not everything has gone in Elon's favor, though, with X (formerly Twitter) apparently being worth 72% less than what it was before the Tech billionaire bought it in 2022.
In a case of kicking himself over investments that could've been, Musk's Tesla reportedly missed out on adding some extra noughts to his bank account by failing to capitalize on the Bitcoin boom.
With the popular cryptocurrency soaring and Bitcoin hitting record highs by officially passing $100,000, Musk could've been sitting on a virtual goldmine.
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As reported by CryptoSlate, Tesla invested $1.5 billion in Bitcoin back in 2021. It was only worth $38,000 per coin then, and likely not thinking Bitcoin was going to do much, Tesla sold 75% of its Bitcoin holdings in July 2022.
Tesla still owns 9,868 BTC, but with Bitcoin sitting at the $100,000 mark, its current holdings are worth around $1 billion.
If Tesla had kept its entire Bitcoin stock, it would be worth over $4 billion in 2024.
This is the problem with cryptocurrency, and with things constantly fluctuating, it's a hard one to predict. Bitcoin has already dropped back below $100k to be worth $98,476 (at the time of writing), although it's still a massive spike compared to the $54,000 it was worth at the start of September.
Tesla has been on something of a Bitcoin rodeo since Musk announced in May 2021 that the car giant wouldn't continue accepting Bitcoin payments due to concerns for the environment.
This news inadvertently tanked the price of Bitcoin by 17% in a single day, and over the following weeks, it hit a low of $28,600.
By the time Tesla sold the majority of its Bitcoin holdings in July 2022, the cryptocurrency was priced at about $18,900. Considering Tesla made $936 million from the sale, its selling price sat at approximately $31,615 - far lower than the $38,000 it was bought for.
As CryptoSlate writes: "Imagine a world where Elon Musk continued to embrace Bitcoin throughout 2021 – 2023 and even championed its use as a payment method. Tesla could have run advertising campaigns internationally with promotions focused on Bitcoin purchases."
Even if you take an arbitrary 1% purchase price in Bitcoin, Tesla would've could've acquired 81,388 BTC by now, which would be worth around $8.3 billion. If Musk has really got behind it, that 1% Bitcoin revenue is a conservative one, meaning it could be worth even more. Unless you've got a time-traveling DeLorean, there's no point worrying about what you could've done differently. Anyway, Elon's got a new favorite crypto in the form of Dogecoin.