Tesla made the bold move to invest in Bitcoin before most, and it's certainly proven to be a success despite the astronomical amount that the electric car juggernaut poured into the unregulated currency.
It's shocking quite how rich many of the earliest investors in Bitcoin have become, as while some regrettably sold off their cryptocurrency fortunes far too early, others have reaped the rewards of patience over the last decade.
This has proven to be especially true over the last year and a half, as the return of President Donald Trump to the White House saw Bitcoin nearly double in price, although it has dropped quite considerably in the last six months.
Bitcoin also received a significant boost back in 2021 when Elon Musk's electric car manufacturer Tesla pledged a jaw-dropping $1.5 billion into the crypto coin despite skepticism from some within the financial world, making the company one of the largest corporate holders of cryptocurrency worldwide as per the International Business Times.
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That $1.5 billion equated to 43,770 coins, which works out to roughly $34,000-per-coin, which allows us to see quite how much the company's stocks have grown since then.
Based on the current Bitcoin price of $71,200, Tesla's stock would be worth nearly double at $3.12 billion, and it could have been worth as much as $5.46 billion if the company had sold at the coin's peak last July.
It's unfortunately a little more complicated than that in practice though, as while Tesla did sell off 4,670 Bitcoin between March and April 2021 – working out to around $100.2 million in profit at the time – and a slump in 2022 prompted the company to drop its reserves down to 20 percent of the initial investment.
Knowing when to sell your assets, especially when they are valued as much as this, is the hardest part of the investment process, and for something with a price as volatile as Bitcoin it can prove to be even more difficult.
Selling at the wrong time could prove to be disastrous for Tesla, especially if the company tries to dump it all at once which would be almost guaranteed to crash the market, so it might be better to sell off in portions over time in response to positive market moves — especially as experts predict that growing inflation in response to global events could manifest a higher Bitcoin price.
Right now it's understood that Tesla currently holds around 8,430 BTC, which have remained relatively untouched for a number of years now, so perhaps they could be waiting for the perfect moment to strike despite it being valued at around $594 million, representing a $310 million profit.