In brief

  • Tesla's Q1 filing with the SEC reveals that it held $2.48 billion worth of Bitcoin on its balance sheet as of March 31.
  • In an investor call yesterday, the automaker also said that it sold 10% of its Bitcoin holdings for $272 million in Q1.

E.V. manufacturer Tesla has put an exact figure on its Bitcoin holdings, revealing in its Q1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that as of March 31, 2021, the market value of Bitcoin held on its balance sheet was $2.48 billion.

In the filing, Tesla recorded a net gain of $101 million on digital assets during the quarter, based on realized gains of $128 million through sales, and $27 million of impairment losses on its Bitcoin investment during the same period. Bitcoin is the only digital asset held by the company.

The filing follows an investor call yesterday on which Tesla revealed that it had sold 10% of its Bitcoin holdings for $272 million in the first quarter of 2021. CEO Elon Musk later tweeted (in response to sniping from Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy) that the company had done so in order to "prove liquidity of Bitcoin as an alternative to holding cash on balance sheet."

The automaker revealed in a January 2021 SEC filing that it had purchased Bitcoin worth $1.5 billion, and planned to accept Bitcoin as payment for its products—keeping any BTC earned from sales, rather than converting it into fiat currency. True to its word, last month Tesla introduced the option to purchase its products using Bitcoin in the US, noting that it would introduce the feature to other regions later in the year.

Tesla's Bitcoin buy sparked a rush of interest in the cryptocurrency, with MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor—who offered to share his "playbook" for buying Bitcoin with Musk—describing it as the "tip of the iceberg" for institutional investment.

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