Elon Musk’s electric car maker Tesla is believed to still be holding onto its nearly $780 million worth of Bitcoin, despite moving the funds from its wallets for the first time in two years, prompting rumors the firm was selling its BTC holdings.
Blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence has, on the microblogging platform X, recently revealed it believes Tesla’s wallets movements “were wallets rotations with the Bitcoin still owned by Tesla.”
The firm moved their entire 11,509 BTC stash to new cryptocurrency wallets last week, with the largest portions going to addresses identified by their initials “1Fnhp” and “1LERL.”
The reasons behind the transactions are unclear, with neither Tesla nor Elon Musk commenting on these movements. The wallets have, however, remained inactive after receiving the funds.
These movements prompted some in the cryptocurrency community to speculate that Tesla moved its BTC to wallets belonging to custodians in a bid to in the future leverage its Bitcoin holdings to, for example, secure a loan against them or use them to generate yield.
Earlier this month Japanese firm Metaplanet, well-known for its Bitcoin investments, adjusted the strike price on its BTC put options strategy to further boost the yield it is generating through its Bitcoin holdings.
The move, known as an options roll-up, is a strategy in which investors close an existing options position and open a new position for the same option, often at a later date with a higher strike price. In this case, the strike price was raised to $66,000.
Tesla notably first invested in Bitcoin in February 2021, investing a whopping $1.5 billion into the cryptocurrency. The company sold about 75% of its BTC holdings a year later, citing a need for cash as the reason behind its move.
