Tesla has converted 75% of its bitcoin purchases into fiat currency in Q2, the company said Wednesday (July 20) in an earnings statement, adding $936 million in cash to the balance sheet.
This comes as the company, and CEO Elon Musk, have been publicly in support of cryptocurrency over the years, including investing $1.5 billion in bitcoin last year, saying the coin had “long-term potential.” But that was before the recent bear market and troubles with crypto.
Musk said on an earnings call Wednesday that the reason for the sale was that the company was “uncertain as to when the COVID lockdowns in China would alleviate so it was important for us to maximize our cash position,” CNBC wrote.
Musk added that this shouldn’t be taken as a “verdict” on bitcoin.
Bitcoin has lost half its value in the last four months, other coins have collapsed, and some exchanges are freezing withdrawals and going bankrupt.
Tesla, speaking further about its Q2, said it had produced over 258,000 vehicles and delivered more than 254,000 of them. This came in spite of the supply chain problems going on globally, along with “factory shutdowns beyond our control,” the company said.
The company noted “a continuation of manufacturing challenges related to shutdowns, global supply chain disruptions, labor shortages and logistics and other complications, which limited our ability to consistently run our factories at full capacity.”
PYMNTS wrote about some of Tesla’s crypto work, including announcing that the company would take DOGE as payment in January.
See also: Tesla Customers Can Now Pay With Dogecoin … for Accessories, Not Cars
This followed Musk’s personal touting of the coin that had been mostly seen as a joke. The coin’s market cap rose $2 billion in January upon the news.
That came after it was under $0.006 as of New Year’s Day 2021, but it rose to $0.73 when Musk started tweeting about it later that year.
Musk’s tweets have been able to affect the price of the coin, such as in February when he said he’d bought his newborn child some of the coin.
On the call with the analysts Wednesday, he said Tesla hadn’t sold any of its dogecoin.
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