Elon Musk’s Tesla missed out on $3 billion by selling Bitcoin at $31k

While Bitcoin surpassing $100,000 today, increased the value of Tesla’s remaining crypto holdings to over $1 billion, Tesla initially invested $1.5 billion in Bitcoin in early 2021 at an average price of $38,000 per coin. This purchase amounted to approximately 39,474 BTC.

In July 2022, Tesla sold 75% of its Bitcoin holdings, reducing its total to about 9,868 BTC. With Bitcoin now at $102,000, Tesla’s remaining holdings are valued at approximately $1 billion. Had the company retained its entire initial investment, the value would have exceeded $4 billion.

Here’s an estimate of Tesla’s Bitcoin holdings from 2021:

Year	Bitcoin Holdings (BTC)	Bitcoin Price ($)	Total value ($)
2021 (Initial Purchase)	39,474	38,000	1,500,000,000
2024 (Current Holdings)	9,868	102,000	1,006,536,000
2024 (If No Sale)	39,474	102,000	4,026,348,000

Bitcoin’s bull run took a considerable hit when Elon Musk announced on May 12, 2021, that Tesla would no longer accept Bitcoin as payment due to environmental concerns. The price then fell 17% in a single day from $56,000 to $49,400. Over the following weeks, it fell as low as $28,600 before making a new all-time high in November.

By July 2022, Bitcoin had returned to around $18,900, and by the time it was released, Tesla had only a quarter of its Bitcoin left. Tesla made $936 million from the sale, indicating that it sold for less than its purchase price of $38,000. With around 29,605 BTC sold by Telsa, that equates to a selling price of approximately $31,615.

If Tesla had not stopped accepting Bitcoin and we take an arbitrary 1% of its revenue as paid in Bitcoin, it could have acquired around 81,388 BTC, which would now be worth around $8.3 billion.