Tesla made no changes to its Bitcoin holdings in Q3

The electric car company Tesla did not buy or sell Bitcoin in the third quarter after selling 75% of its assets in the second quarter.

Tesla (TSLA) did not sell any of its Bitcoin assets or purchase any additional BTC in the third quarter, the company said on Wednesday in its latest earnings report.

The value of the company's digital assets remained nearly $218 million, as it was at the end of the second quarter, when Tesla surprised some investors by selling $936 million worth of Bitcoin, roughly 75% of its total assets, to raise cash.

Tesla reported no losses from the depreciation of the value of its Bitcoin holdings, as the price of the cryptocurrency remained almost unchanged at the end of the second and third quarters - just below $20,000.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said during a phone call about the company's second-quarter results that the asset sale was a forced step due to "uncertainty about the COVID situation in China," but noted that Tesla is open to increasing BTC's stake in its holdings in the future, the sale “should not be taken as some kind of doom for Bitcoin.” After the publication of the first news, the price of BTC fell by about 1.7%, but soon regained its losses after the above comments by Elon Musk.

Tesla ended the second quarter with just $218 million in BTC on its balance sheet, down from $1.26 billion in the previous three quarters. The company said it made a $64 million gain on the sale of its assets in the second quarter, which was offset by a $170 million depreciation loss on the rest of Bitcoin, resulting in a net cost of profit and loss of $106 million.

In February 2021, Tesla announced a $1.5 billion purchase of Bitcoin, causing the price of the cryptocurrency to skyrocket. Later in the same quarter, the company cut its BTC position by 10%, a sale that boosted its first-quarter earnings by $272 million. Tesla didn’t buy or sell any more cryptocurrencies until the second quarter of this year.

For the third quarter overall, the company reported adjusted earnings per share of $1.05, better than analysts' consensus estimate of $1.00 per share in FactSet, on revenue of $21.45 billion. US short of $21.98 billion valuation Tesla shares fell just over 4% to $212.83 in flash trading on Wednesday, October 19th.