JAKARTA - Tesla boss Elon Musk made a massive purchase of Bitcoin worth 1.5 billion US dollars or equivalent to IDR 21 trillion (exchange rate of IDR 14,000). The plan is that the crypto currency will be used for payment transactions for the purchase of Tesla cars.
As a result, the massive purchase of cryptocurrencies has driven the increase of bitcoin assets to 16 percent or more than 43,000 US dollars. This means that at the current price 0.88 bitcoin will be enough to buy a Tesla Model 3.
Investors anticipate other companies will soon join the list of companies that invest or hold bitcoin including BlackRock Inc, the world's largest asset manager, as well as payment companies Square and PayPal.
Elon Musk has overturned Wall Street over the past year and briefly became the world's richest man as Tesla's stock surged nearly 500 percent to become the fifth most valuable US company, leaving companies and investors eager to follow in his footsteps.
19th #bitcoin All Time High of the cycle 🥳 pic.twitter.com/BBzYrnQMli
— ChartsBTC (@ChartsBtc) February 9, 2021
"If any of the inferior people make the decision to place a portion of their balance sheet in Bitcoin, I don't think it's going to be taken seriously," said Thomas Hayes, managing member at Great Hill Capital LLC in New York. "But when the richest person in the world did it, everyone had to see it again."
The news sparked massive trading in cryptocurrencies and caused exchanges like Coinbase, Gemini, Binance to run into technical problems, according to Coindesk.
It also generates discussion on Reddit. While discussions about banned cryptocurrencies in the WallStreetBets community sparked a GameStop Corp trading frenzy, users on other subreddits posted "to the moon," expecting more companies to follow after Tesla.
As a well-known cryptocurrency supporter, Elon Musk has regularly considered the retail investment frenzy of the past month, as well as driving up the price of meme-based digital currency dogecoin and US video game chain GameStop shares.
Experts said they would not be surprised by the tighter scrutiny from regulators given Elon Musk's rough past with supervisors.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) debated multiple times with Elon Musk and Tesla over his use of Twitter to discuss the company, which ultimately resulted in him leaving his position as chairman of the company and fines of USD 20 million to Elon Musk and Tesla.
Everyone at Tesla receives stock. My comp is all stock/options, which I do not take off the table. That’s what you’re missing.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 9, 2021
"We are talking about a billionaire with one of the most valuable companies in world history who appeared to have escaped the SEC before," said Tyler Gellasch, chairman of the Healthy Markets Association in Washington and a former SEC official. However, Gellasch said that "an examination does not mean this is likely to be an enforcement case."
Tesla said in its report that the decision to move nearly eight percent of its reserves to bitcoin was part of its broad investment policy as a company that aims to diversify and maximize cash returns, including holding gold. The report said it ended 2020 with 19.38 billion US dollars in cash and cash equivalents.
"We hope to start 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 liquidate upon acceptance," the company said.
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