What does Tesla buying Bitcoin mean for its future?
8th February 2021 — I woke up just like every other day and reached for my phone to scroll through Twitter. The first news that popped up was Tesla released their earnings report for the year. Awesome. So I download the fairly large PDF file while I make coffee and sit down for a quick read. As a TSLA shareholder, I’m quite interested in knowing how my (very humble) investment is being spent.
That’s when something struck my eye; a cryptocurrency purchase for $1.5B. I had to take a second look just to make sure. Elon actually did it, he went ahead and bought a whole lot of Bitcoins. Now that’s what we in the industry call a “pro gamer move”.
I immediately log back on to Twitter to see how the stock market gurus and the crypto mavericks are responding to the news. As expected, it was chaotic! Everyone had their own hypotheses and theories of why Elon made this move. Some people were translating this investment as the strongest sell signal for TSLA and the other side saw this as the strongest buy signal for BTC. Regardless, I was sure of one thing; Bitcoin was about to soar to the moon.
Additionally, Tesla has also confirmed that they are considering Bitcoin as a form of payment for their products.
But what really is the result of such a historic move by Tesla? It’s easy — Destigmatization. Tesla essentially brought corporate investment into cryptocurrencies out into the mainstream. I can already see it in the next shareholder meeting, the investors are going to ask their CFOs “how come we didn’t make an investment in Bitcoin?” or “I think we too should seriously consider buying some Bitcoin”. That’s really good news because decentralized currency should be the future.
As soon as this news hit the mainstream, media went on a frenzy trying to get quotes from other CEOs and CFOs to see if they too were considering a corporate investment into Bitcoin. Uber’s CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told Business Insider that the company is open to consider Bitcoin as an acceptable form of payment. Similarly, Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter stated that they too are considering making a purchase of Bitcoins. Along with their announcement that Twitter might add a “tipping” option for Twitter users, this could be a decision that works in perfect synergy. Conglomerate billionaire Grupo Salinas added #Bitcoin to his twitter bio as well as a subtle nod to the 10% of his wealth he has invested in Bitcoin.
“We see fundamental reasons to believe that — regardless of where the price of bitcoin goes next — cryptocurrencies are here to stay as a serious asset class.” — Chief Global Strategist, Morgan Stanley
And that’s a mic drop statement for all people that were hesitant on investing in Bitcoin or saw it as a form of currency that wasn’t going anywhere. It’s here and it’s here to stay.
