on the crypto
The announcement that much of the crypto world was hoping for has come: Tesla has invested in bitcoin. The electric vehicle maker said Monday in a document filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission that it had invested a total of $ 1,5 billion in bitcoin under a new investment policy that includes digital assets.
The most awaited news has arrived
The news comes as the conclusion of a story that dates back to at least 2018, when Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk began tweeting and commenting with phrases focused on bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, including dogecoin.
In a time when central banks around the world have printed and injected huge amounts of money into financial markets to support their coronavirus-damaged economies, more and more major institutional investors, including Paul Tudor Jones II and Bill Miller , has promoted bitcoin as a viable, viable hedge against inflation.
Tesla (TSLA) joins publicly traded companies, including Michael Saylor's MicroStrategy, which have invested corporate money reserves in bitcoin. Tesla is also considering a further step towards cryptocurrencies, which is to be able to accept bitcoin payments for its products in the not too distant future.
A new placement for Bitcoin in global markets
Bitcoin saw a record price hike in a single day on Monday, earning over $ 8.000, surpassing $ 46.000, and hitting new highs above $ 48.000. quotation in real time). This latest price hike has pushed bitcoin's return year-to-date to around 50%, against 3,9% for the Standard & Poor's index of large US stocks.
Tesla's announcement and subsequent rise in bitcoin prices apparently triggered such a wave of trading activity that large cryptocurrency exchanges including Binance, Coinbase, Gemini, and Kraken all faced technical difficulties.
With 12 years of history, Bitcoin which is the oldest and largest cryptocurrency in the world now has a market valuation of $ 818 billion, just under Tesla's $ 823 billion but above Facebook's $ 757 billion, according to the site. web companiesmarketcap.com.
Only seven other publicly traded companies in the world are larger than bitcoin, although it is still well below the market value of $ 11,7 trillion for gold and $ 1,5 trillion for silver. "I should have bought bitcoin eight years ago," Musk said in a chat on February 1. “At this point I think bitcoin is a good thing”.
What will happen now?
The market is now evaluating the likelihood of other companies copying Tesla and Microstrategy's corporate cash reserve management strategy, according to John Cramer, a trader at GSR. “The tides are constantly changing in cryptocurrencies and what may be lurking and ready to change now is the sovereign wealth funds that could become the next wave of institutions to adopt this corporate playbook,” Cramer said.
