Elon Musk Announces SpaceX Holds Bitcoin; Says Tesla May Begin Accepting it Again

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk broke news at a Wednesday bitcoin conference, announcing that another one of his companies is holding the digital currency.

“On balance, I support bitcoin,” Musk said during a virtual appearance for the “The ₿ Word” conference, while noting he wasn’t a fan of the stock market. “I’m not an investor. The only publicly traded stock I own is Tesla, and the only significant thing I own outside of Tesla is SpaceX stock. I helped create both companies.”

“Apart from that, I do own bitcoin,” he added. “Tesla owns bitcoin. SpaceX owns bitcoin, and I do personally own a bit of Ethereum and Dogecoin.”

Tesla announced in a February filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it purchased $1.5 billion in bitcoin, though it subsequently sold some of its holdings. SpaceX announced in May that it would accept Dogecoin to launch a “DOGE-1 Mission to the Moon,” but it had not disclosed holding bitcoin prior to Musk’s announcement.

Despite the paucity of public disclosures about SpaceX’s holdings, SkyBridge Capital founder Anthony Scaramucci said as early as March that he had learned about the development, writing on Twitter, “Elon Musk didn’t stop with Tesla. I understand that SpaceX owns #bitcoin on its balance sheet. Musk owns over $5 billion in #bitcoin via Tesla, SpaceX, and personally.”

The price of bitcoin surged on the heels of February’s revelations about Tesla — in addition to its announcement that it would begin accepting bitcoin as payment for its electric vehicles. Bitcoin’s price sank after Musk quickly reversed course, saying in May that Tesla would no longer accept bitcoin as a form of payment due to concerns over the energy usage involved with mining it. However, he said on Wednesday that he was considering a new reversal.

“I want to do a little more due diligence to confirm that the percentage of renewable energy usage [involved in mining bitcoin] is most likely at or above 50 percent and that there is a trend toward increasing that number,” Musk said. “If so, Tesla will most likely resume accepting bitcoin.”

Watch above via The ₿ Word.