Tesla’s Elon Musk mulls major bitcoin investment

As bitcoin hit a new record high of high of $24,299.75 on Sunday, Elon Musk asked about the possibility of converting “large transactions” of Tesla Inc’s balance sheet into bitcoin, according to a Twitter exchange between Musk and a well-known advocate for the digital currency.

Michael Saylor, chief executive officer of MicroStrategy Inc, in a tweet to Musk, suggested that the billionaire Tesla founder and head, make the move.

“If you want to do your shareholders a $100 billion favor, convert the Tesla balance sheet from USD to #BTC,” Saylor wrote in his tweet. “Other firms on the S&P 500 would follow your lead & in time it would grow to become a $1 trillion favor.”

“Are such large transactions even possible?” Musk replied to Saylor.Tesla and Musk could not be reached for comment.

“Every CEO faces the challenge of how to preserve and enhance shareholder value in the face of this year’s unprecedented monetary expansion,” Saylor said in a message to Reuters.

Shares of Tesla rose to a record high on Friday in a frantic day of trading as investors geared up for the electric carmaker’s much anticipated entrance into the benchmark S&P 500 index on Monday.

Bitcoin passed the $20,000 milestone for the first time last week, amid surging interest from larger investors. Bitcoin was last at $23,60.98 up 2.88 per cent

There is increasing interest in bitcoin investment from institutional investors who now see it as a store of value while the major currencies remain volatile.

“My expectation is that bitcoin will become a trillion dollar asset (in market cap) as early as next year,” Garrick Hileman, who is also a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics, told Business Insider.

Source: cyprus-mail.com