Talk about a missed opportunity.

Horrible Timing

Tesla massively missed the mark in the second quarter of this year, conceding this week that its automotive revenue fell a whopping 16 percent from last year, on top of last quarter’s financial woes.

As sales continue to plummet worldwide, the Elon Musk-led EV maker could really use a lifeline in the form of billions of cash.

But as CNBC reports, its digital asset investments likely won’t be the solution.

Tesla boasted in its investor deck that while its Bitcoin was worth only $722 million in 2024, it’s spiked to $1.24 billion after the past year’s rally. Bigger picture, though, the company lost out on much larger gains when it unloaded three-quarters of its holdings in mid-2022, pretty much the worst time it could’ve done so.

During the company’s Q2 earnings call in 2022, Musk rationalized that the company was “uncertain as to when the COVID lockdowns in China would alleviate” at the time, alluding to a massive sales crunch in the country caused by the pandemic.

While it’s unclear at what price it sold most of its Bitcoin, the token was trading at below the $30,000 mark by the end of that quarter — a mere quarter of what the coin is worth now.

Premature Unloading

According to CNBC‘s calculations, the $936 million worth of Bitcoin the company cashed out in 2022 would be worth over $3.5 billion today — money that the carmaker could certainly use right now.

However, Tesla’s woes this year aren’t the result of a global pandemic; they’re because of Musk’s leadership. The mercurial CEO has alienated huge swathes of the population with his embrace of far-right ideologies and disastrous decision-making at the helm of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, greatly tarnishing the brand in the process.

Now that Trump is throwing his full weight behind loosening cryptocurrency regulations, part of a larger effort to enrich himself and his family, Bitcoin is booming.

And three years later, Tesla executives — including Musk — must be kicking themselves for cashing out far too soon.

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