According to the documents, Tesla lost $140m (£113.5m) on its Bitcoin investment in 2022. An electric car maker told US regulators it lost a total of $204 million in Bitcoin despite recovering $64 million from transactions. Tesla said he will invest his $1.5 billion in Bitcoin in early 2021 and CEO Elon Musk will accept it as a payment method. A few weeks later, the course changed and Tesla sold most of its Bitcoin holdings.
Mr. Musk has been among the most high-profile champions of cryptocurrency, with his pronouncements on social media often driving significant trading activity. Tesla’s February 2021 Bitcoin purchase caused the cryptocurrency to rise in price by more than 25% to $48,000 – a record high at the time. It rose again in March 2021, when Mr. Musk tweeted Tesla would allow customers to make their car purchases using Bitcoin. This enabled people in the US to secure orders with the equivalent of a $100 deposit in Bitcoin.
According to the UK Treasury, Bitcoin’s global annual energy use is estimated to be around 39% of the UK’s energy use with some estimates putting cryptocurrency’s energy use even higher. That price soared to nearly $70,000 in November 2022 but plunged more than 50% when Tesla decided to sell most of its holdings.
