Tesla, a tech company led by well-known crypto enthusiast Elon Musk, has bought $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin and plans to add support for BTC as a form of payment in the near future, according to its filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) published today.
“Thereafter, we invested an aggregate $1.50 billion in bitcoin under this policy,” revealed Tesla’s Form 10-K.
The company explained that its investment policy was updated in January 2021 to provide “more flexibility to further diversify and maximize returns on our cash that is not required to maintain adequate operating liquidity.” As part of this revised policy, Tesla said that it “may invest a portion of such cash in certain specified alternative reserve assets.”
Additionally, the company expects to begin accepting Bitcoin as payment for its products in the future.
“Moreover, we expect to begin accepting bitcoin as a form of payment for our products in the near future, subject to applicable laws and initially on a limited basis, which we may or may not liquidate upon receipt,” the document noted.
At press time, Bitcoin is trading at around $42,600, up 9.2% on the day.
However, Elon Musk has recently demonstrated that he has a notable influence on the crypto market. Recently, when Musk changed his bio section on Twitter to include just one word—”Bitcoin”—the BTC’s price surged by nearly 20%.
In another instance, a single tweet from him with the word “Doge” was enough to pump “meme cryptocurrency” Dogecoin by nearly 80% last week. Even today, another one of Musk’s tweets catalyzed DOGE’s surge by 50%.
While it is commendable that Musk has literally put his money where his mouth is, couldn’t his unprecedented influence on the crypto market now be perceived as a conflict of interest?
The article was updated to include additional details.
The post Tesla invests $1.5 billion into Bitcoin, plans to accept BTC payments appeared first on CryptoSlate.