Thats not a notable difference - it goes up and down all the time. Its renowned for its volatility. You can hardly say 'bitcoin seemed to be going only up' with a straight face - its been a rollercoaster since day 1.
It's had a few sharp downs. It's had a few long plateaus of a year or so.
But - from the perspective of yesterday going back a few months - it certainly seemed to only go up.
If the S&P was up over 59,000,000x in 12 years, people would say the S&P only goes up... I mean, they already say "stonks only go up".
The S&P keeps going up because if it went down the fed would lower interest rates until it started going up again.
I seem to remember that back then it was more "When you're down so low, the only way is up".
I should have grabbed a few score of those BTC for pocket change, but did not bother. Yeah, I know.
Child: Parent, parent, where does our generational wealth come from?
Parent: Well you see my child, back in 2012, I didn't buy a pizza...
On the other hand, Tesla is unique in that it literally went out and bought bitcoin to just sit on it, which is incredibly dumb.
Look at the price when Tesla announced they bought bitcoin worth about a billion dollars. Even after the current fall, the price now is way higher than back then.
Just the way Musk has been able to manipulate the whole market after investing his? and Tesla's money is just extraordinary.
It was a strategic investment which has reaped money like anything in such a short span and they even used part of it to generate a positive component to their balance sheet in last quarter.
McAfee was arrested for pumping crypto, but he was lying about his ownership and gave pretty specific forward looking claims. I don't believe he's been convicted yet.
The thing he got in trouble for with Tesla was for lying about about a takeover offer, which is criminal, basically because it's a type of fraud. This isn't that.
Not a lawyer, not legal advice, etc.
They can get 5-10B in it, then Elon can pump it up more.
Elon took a relative small bet by been the first mayor company to buy massive amounts of crypto and so far he has made bank. Only the future will tell if it was a good move in the long run.
Bitcoin and crypto is basically a gamble. But what Musk and Tesla did wasn’t a gamble.
What they did was to effectively monetize Musk’s cult like following and his well earned reputation. They knew with the greatest certainty that the news of Tesla/Musk supporting crypto would lift crypto, so they managed to make money off it.
New money as a percentage of GDP?
Step 1: purchase $1.5Bn in Bitcoin
Step 2: make an announcement that will likely result in a rising valuation (it briefly went up by ~20% just because Musk added #bitcoin to his bio on Twitter...)
Step 3: sell 10% of your bitcoin at a profit of >$272M in Q1
Step 4: wait for the market to go up again, then proceed with Step 3
It's less risky to invest in a highly volatile, unregulated market if you have the means to somewhat steer the market just by making an announcement or have your company's figurehead add a hashtag on Twitter...
I am not asserting that Elan's and Tesla's motives were pure. Nor that they complied with all applicable laws, regulations, etc. But "classic pump-and-dump" is a poor and very misleading description of the events to date.
>Face of the company" and "figurehead" have different meanings. The latter is pejorative..
“Private-equity firm revives zombie fossil-fuel power plant to mine bitcoin”
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/private-equity-f...
If that is the case, what was going on before?
Prior, lean was towards renewable sources like hydro because of lower cost of surplus energy.
On another note, I don't think anybody was able to buy a Tesla with Bitcoin. This was a false claim that never came to fruition. Some serious market manipulation here by Tesla and Elon.
If we were talking penny stocks, this is classic pump and dump behavior that should result in jail time.
I mean how much attention does one person need.
It's not going to matter. If Bitcoin is going down persistently it means we're on the back side of this global asset mania (which the commodity bubble may be signaling, that we're in or close to the 9th inning), and Tesla's stock is going with it under all scenarios. $900 to $589 is already telling an obvious story.
Granted it's not just Tesla's bubble that is well over, the cloud bubble has ended as well (just wait until you see how low eg Snowflake goes, top to bottom).
Amusingly, Bitcoin is likely to hold its value better than Tesla, in the case of the asset bubbles giving out. The market will look to value Tesla a bit closer to fundamentals (already happening), which is another 70-90% down for Tesla. At some point Tesla will be valued based on cashflow, profit production, and they'll never be able to support a $500b valuation; whereas Bitcoin can support something like a trillion dollar valuation globally (even if it takes more time to hold that ground persistently).
I can't wait to go value hunting in the cloud again, as in March of 2020. Tesla won't be on that shopping list.
I guess we might know if Musk sells his coins.
(And no--I have no evidence. I just know wealthy boys get information. Even the people who didn't like Musk did 180's after his ingratiating performance Saturday Night Live. For the record, I have always liked Musk.)
Contrast with the scenario where they keep doing it, steadily increasing their bitcoin holdings and even seeing the proportion of sales using bitcoin increase… and THEN hit a wall, not of their own choosing, and see the value collapse.
Even if they are not dumping their holdings at all, there's still a case to be made for pulling a plug at a time they control, over an amount they control. If it collapses, they can put a hard limit on how much they lose: that being, the previous value of their entire bitcoin holdings.
From a BTC perspective USD is very volatile!
The amount of BTC Tesla could take in was likely only to be a small fraction of the amount they already hold. The terms were terrible for buyers, since TSLA forced them to take the downside risk on BTC movements.
Pretty sure he saw this now deleted thread on Reddit /r/dogecoin
https://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/nb1rki/cryptocurr...
From ElegantPoop:
> Well, it would appear by this image we have ourselves a sub 1% of bitcoin per transaction. Winning.
Winning indeed.
"Hey, poppa, why is our currency named doge coin?"
'Well son, a long time ago there was this really cute shiba inu that became a bit of a meme and then the internet happened.'
TSLA appears to follow the same curve as BTC ... but either way it doesn't make sense, because if you accept BTC payments, you can instantly transfer them to cash if you don't trust BTC.
It did jump up 6% the day he announced Tesla was accepting bitcoin, but he effectively undid all of that (and more, it went down around 12%) yesterday, as well as add more seeming legitimacy to the 'bitcoin is bad for the environment' line that the media has been pushing hard since it started shooting up again (they didn't give a shit when its price was low, even though not much has changed for energy use between then and now).
Some people aren't just looking to make a quick buck, they want to see crypto become a more stable asset class, not just another pump and dump scheme (plenty of shitty alt-coins for pump and dump schemes). This one tweet put a lot more uncertainty into that (it shouldn't have, but it did), especially if it triggers a wave of 'well bitcoin is bad for the environment, so we better get out' from other entities.
Also how would he not know bitcoin's energy usage before the first announcement? If he had done any due diligence at all he would have known this, so either they didn't do any research or it's a bullshit scapegoat to cover up the real reason they're backing out.
In the long run I think Bitcoin will survive this, but in the short term it could prematurely kill (or at least significantly stunt) this current bull run and we could already be back on track for the next multi-year bear market, which I've been through twice now with bitcoin, and it sucks (good for accumulating bitcoin on the cheap though).
The company probably made a lot of money with this maneuver.
You mean just over the last month?
Now it seems to be going down. When bitcoin continues to steadily go down, it is a significant concern because Tesla will have to take losses on the cars it sells and will have reduced gross margins, which will result in their stock price tanking.
They can always price cars based on BTC's price and liquidate it to fiat or cryptocurrency of their choice.
Btc swings can be +/-20% a day, so not exactly a great comparison.
Also currency hedging is a thing that many companies employ to normalize profits. I’m sure there’s a BTC equivalent for this but the volatility would make it unreliable most likely
That's not "a few basis points"
Also losing 15% against the DKK which regular people use to shop just a 25 min ride from here.
Currency fluctuations are not uncommon and can be very significant.
Currency is a representation of the market it represents. Not from memes of billionaires.
Is that so hard to understand?
so musk realized finally that bitcoin is volatile. he's an idiot. his stupid appearance on snl confirms this perspective for me. why are so many people listening to this dimwit. he has nothing of value to offer or say. he should keep his stupid mouth shut. he's worse than trump in that regard.
Except that's actually what he did, so if it was smart, then he didn't believe he was risking his business on it. Many, many retailers already stopped accepting bitcoin for this exact reason, so either he's not smart, according to your logic, or he had ulterior motives, which must somehow be smarter than the surface appearance of it. It can't be both.
Here's what changed: Your perception of him.
You think he has anyone's interest at stake but his own. He does not. He will throw anyone under the bus for his whims, even the entire planet. He disparages and slanders people rescuing kids from a cave.
> covered up with false reasoning
Um, do you mean a lie? This is all so juvenile. Are you afraid he's going to say, "What are you calling me a liar?"
Yes. You're calling him a liar. He's a liar. That's what he is.
What else is he lying about? He has proven, unequivocally, that he is willing to ruin people for profit.
He's not doing well for human beings and he is actively betraying people who want to help humanity. When the truth can no longer be denied, all of those Tesla buyers are going to have some real egg on their faces. When Tesla goes under and they all stop working. It's just a matter of time.
The amount of catastrophe that has already been created by this man is, as of yet, unimaginable. It is indefensible.
> he should have never reached this stage
We agree on that.
So what changed? Well I think the biggest notable difference between then and now is then bitcoin seemed to be going only up. Now it seems to be going down. When bitcoin continues to steadily go down, it is a significant concern because Tesla will have to take losses on the cars it sells and will have reduced gross margins, which will result in their stock price tanking.
Musk smartly decided he did not want to risk his half a trillion dollar company on random bitcoin fluctuations. It is probably the right decision (although certainly covered up with false reasoning) but he should have never reached this stage. Tesla should have never taken bitcoin without provisions for automatically converting it into one of the currencies it pays its costs in.