Tesla, the company of the famous entrepreneur Elon Musk, announced on Monday its big investment in Bitcoin. Tesla bought $1.5 billion worth of the cryptocurrency and sent Bitcoin to new record highs, or in crypto slang “to the moon”.
The story of Elon Musk and Bitcoin has started just a few weeks ago. The billionaire simply added the hashtag #bitcoin to his bio, which immediately pushed the cryptocurrency price by 20%. Two days later, he said:
I do at this point think bitcoin is a good thing, and I am a supporter of bitcoin.
Elon Musk
Musk kept on tweeting about other cryptocurrencies, which reflected on their prices as well. For example, he posted a few times about Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency that started as a joke based on the “doge” meme. Even though he explicitly said these tweets are jokes, the price of Dogecoin more than doubled after the tweets.
Finally, on Monday, he made a step further in supporting Bitcoin. The company Tesla purchased Bitcoin for $1.5 billion for “more flexibility to further diversify and maximize returns on our cash.” Furthermore, Tesla confirmed it can start accepting payments in BTC for its products. The $1.5 billion worth of BTC will give Tesla liquidity in the cryptocurrency once it starts accepting it for payments.
Tesla is not the first big company to invest in Bitcoin
Steps like the recent one by Tesla, as well as PayPal enabling crypto payments, are turning digital currencies into an asset class for investors. The overall crypto market capitalization reached $1 trillion in January. Microstrategy Inc., Square Inc., and MassMutual become some of the institutions with big investments in crypto.
Besides Tesla, the next big investor in crypto might be Apple. According to a report of RBC Capital Markets, Apple Inc has a “clear opportunity” to offer a buying and selling mechanism for cryptocurrencies. This step will make the United States a global leader in crypto assets.
