Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA), an electric vehicle maker in the United States announced on Wednesday, July 20, in a new financial disclosure that the firm sold most of its Bitcoin in the second quarter of 2022.
In a quarterly statement, Tesla made it known that the company converted 75% of its BTC purchases into the United States Dollar (USD) by the end of June. Overall, the percentage amounted to $963 million in cash.
In February 2021, Tesla announced that it had bought $1.5 million worth of Bitcoin. This contributed to BTC testing $50,000 for the first time and reaching a new all-time high (ATH) of $58,330.57 on Feb. 21 last year. The trading volume for the day was $51.89 billion and corresponded to a market capitalization of $1.07 trillion, per data from CoinMarketCap.
Per the released financial statements, the company held around the same net digital asset holdings for three consecutive quarters (the third, last quarters of 2021, and the first quarter of 2022). The firm now has $218 million in cryptocurrencies and this is an 82% plunge from the $1.261 billion worth of digital assets on its books by the end of March.
It should be noted that this is not the first time Tesla is selling a portion of its Bitcoin holdings. In March 2021, Tesla sold some of its coins and realized $128 million as net profit. At the time of sale, BTC was crossing new price milestones weekly. Elon Musk, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Tesla pointed out that it was to prove to naysayers and skeptics of decentralized finance that real profits could be made from digital assets instead of holding cash on a balance sheet.
Within the second quarter, BTC opened on April 1 at $45,554.16, reached a quarterly high of $47,313.48 on April 3, tested a quarterly low of $17,708.62 on June 18, and closed with a reduced trading price of $19,784.73 on June 30. Overall, this equated to a 56% decrease in the opening and closing price of BTC in the second quarter of 2022.
Source: BTC/USD Chart by TradingView
The most popular and largest digital asset by market capitalization topped $24,000 for the first time since mid-June on Wednesday, July 20. It reached an intraday high of $24,196.82.
As of 9:25 p.m. UTC on Wednesday, July 20, Bitcoin was exchanging hands for $23,365.18, had a trading volume of approximately $42.84 billion, and this corresponded to a market capitalization of $446.24 billion.
Although the naysayers believe BTC could be trading below $1,000 in the short, medium, and long term, analysts at Changelly Blog, Wallet Investor, and Digital Coin Price foresee a bull run towards the end of the year.
According to the analysts at Changelly Blog, BTC could command an average trading price of $38,288.89, the least possible trading price of $37,125.49, and the best possible trading price of $41,180.91 by the end of 2022.
Per the experts at Wallet Investor, BTC could retest a normal trading price of $32,698 and a maximum trading price of $41,982.80 by the close of 2022.
Digital Coin Price forecasts Bitcoin to trade for a regular price of $30,828.01, the lowest price of $28,503.43, and the highest price of $32,498.72 by the end of the year.
To many market commentators, many estimates could become reality if there are extensive adoption of crypto, developments on the Bitcoin blockchain, and positive crypto market sentiment returns.