Tesla moves entire $765M Bitcoin stash to unknown wallets

Reported by Cointelegraph: Before the mass transfer, Tesla’s Bitcoin wallet had remained dormant since June 2022.

Electric vehicle maker Tesla transferred its entire Bitcoin stash worth more than $765 million to several unknown wallets.

Crypto wallets labeled as owned by Tesla moved the company’s 11,500 Bitcoin on Oct. 15 across 26 transactions, including test transfers, according to data from Arkham Intelligence.

The first test transfer was made on Oct. 15 at 8:41 pm UTC, and the wallet currently holds just $6.68 worth of Bitcoin.

Before the sudden batch of transfers, Tesla’s Bitcoin wallet had been dormant since June 17, 2022.

There’s no sign that the Bitcoin has been sent to crypto exchanges, and Tesla has not publicly disclosed any plans to offload its crypto.

It isn’t clear if Tesla still has control of the 11,500 Bitcoin, which made it the fourth-largest Bitcoin holder among publicly-traded companies behind leader business intelligence firm MicroStrategy and Bitcoin miners Marathon Digital and Riot Platforms, according to Bitcoin Treasuries data.

Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the transfers.

Tesla first purchased Bitcoin in February 2021, buying $1.5 billion worth of the cryptocurrency.

The following month, it offloaded 4,320 BTC, followed by a sale of 29,160 BTC in 2022.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk briefly accepted Bitcoin as a payment for the company’s vehicles in March 2021 but reversed the decision a few weeks later.

Musk’s spacecraft manufacturing business, SpaceX, still holds 8,285 Bitcoin worth over $553 million — the seventh-largest Bitcoin holdings by a private firm.

Details on Tesla’s Bitcoin transfers — and if it sold its stack — may be disclosed when the company posts its third-quarter financial results after the market close on Oct. 23.

Tesla’s transfers didn’t impact Bitcoin’s price and it’s trading at $66,790, up 1% over the last 24 hours, according to CoinGecko.