Tesla’s Bitcoin (BTC) holdings remain flat in the first quarter of 2023 for the second quarter in a row

Tesla acquired its first bitcoin holdings worth about $1.5 billion amid the 2021 crypto bull market.

Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) released its financial results for the first quarter of 2023 on Thursday, April 19. Interestingly, the electric vehicle giant hasn’t touched its Bitcoin (BTC) holdings in the last six months. Notably, Tesla reported about $184 million worth of bitcoin holdings in the first three months (Q1 2023), similar to the last quarter of 2022. However, the current company’s bitcoin holdings are a notable drop from last year’s Q1 Bag that was worth about $1.261 billion.

Tesla sold most of its bitcoin holdings in the second quarter of 2022, leaving about $218 million worth of bitcoins. The sale of its bitcoin holdings coincided with last year’s bitcoin crash fueled by the collapse of Terra Luna UST.

The company further reduced its Bitcoin holdings in the final quarter of 2022, coinciding with the implosion of FTX and Alameda Research.

Tesla and BTC in Q1 2023 and earlier

In early 2021, Tesla announced it would acquire about $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin. The announcement helped propel Bitcoin price above $64,000 for the first time in 2021. During the same period, the electric vehicle company also announced that it would accept bitcoin for the purchase of electric vehicles. The enthusiasm in the crypto market was short-lived, however, as the company’s push to adopt Bitcoin succumbed to regulatory pressure. Global regulators in particular were concerned about Bitcoin’s high energy consumption through its Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus mechanism. As a result, Tesla announced through Musk that it would suspend accepting Bitcoin as payment for electric vehicles until miners reduced their use of fossil fuels, particularly coal.

Nonetheless, Musk promised that Tesla will switch to bitcoin as a means of payment after miners switch to more sustainable energy sources. Meanwhile, Musk announced that the company is looking for other cryptocurrencies that use less than 1 percent energy per transaction.

Since then, Ethereum (ETH), the second largest digital asset by market cap, has transitioned from the PoW consensus mechanism to the current PoS via the beacon chain.

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Tesla & Bitcoin pic.twitter.com/YSswJmVZhP

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 12, 2021

Interestingly, Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency, Dogecoin, is the second largest proof-of-work secured blockchain after Bitcoin. According to on-chain data provided by Tokenview, as of Thursday, Dogecoin had an overall hashrate of around 649.44 (TH/s) with a mining difficulty of around 9.94 million.

First quarter financial highlights

In the first quarter, Tesla reported that its total revenue increased 24 percent year over year to $23.3 billion. The company noted that new products are on the way, including the long-awaited Cybertruck.

“We are rapidly expanding energy storage production capacity at our megafactory in Lathrop and recently announced a new megafactory in Shanghai. We continue to execute on our product roadmap, including Cybertruck, our next-generation vehicle platform, autonomy, and other AI-enabled products,” Tesla said.

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