Bitcoin: why a wave of huge companies like Tesla rushing to invest could derail the stock market
‘It’s a one-way bet.’ EPA
After Tesla announced it has invested US$1.5 billion in bitcoin and expects to start accepting the cryptocurrency as a payment for its electric vehicles in the near future, the bitcoin price went soaring. It went from around US$39,400 to an all-time high of over US$48,000 in less than 24 hours.
The price is now up by over 50% in the first six weeks of 2021. Led by Elon Musk, Tesla’s investment is obviously in profit already: depending on the exact day of the purchase, it is likely to be worth over US$2 billion, pointing to a paper profit of over US$500 million. To put that in context, when the electric car-maker made its first ever annual net profit in 2020, it was just over US$700 million.