Tesla Suffers $101 Million Impairment Losses on Bitcoin Holdings in 2021

Tesla, the electric car maker, revealed that it suffered a loss of around $101 million of impairment losses from changes in the value of its bitcoin holdings in 2021. Tesla is reported to have invested an aggregate of $1.5 billion in bitcoin in the first quarter of 2021, reports Reuters.

Tesla reveals figures in a filing

Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company revealed these figures in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) explaining how its digital asset holdings could affect its profitability.

The filing read, “In the year ended December 31, 2021, we recorded approximately $101 million of impairment losses resulting from changes to the carrying value of our bitcoin and gains of $128 million on certain sales of bitcoin; by us.”

Tesla invested $1.5B in bitcoin

Tesla revealed that it made an investment amounting to $1.5 billion in bitcoin in the first quarter of 2021. The market value of its bitcoin holdings as of the end of 2021 was $1.99 billion.

Tesla revealed that it had purchased $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin and began accepting it as a form of payment after that. However, in May, Tesla CEO made an abrupt turnaround and went back on this announcement over concerns about the environmental impact of bitcoin mining. Musk had later promised to start accepting BTC as payment for its electric cars if BTC confirmed that 50% of its mining activities used eco-friendly energy resources.

Tesla had briefly accepted cryptocurrency as payment for sales of certain products. After that, however, the company stopped taking digital currency, mentioning environmental crises around bitcoin mining.