Elon Musk, the world's richest man since founding Tesla, recently broke a blockbuster news, according to the latest annual report released on February 7, Due to the depreciation of bitcoin, Musk's Tesla company lost about $101 million in 2021.
It is reported that in early November last year, the price of Bitcoin reached a peak of $67,000 / coin, and then began to fall sharply, as of December 31, it has fallen to $47,000 / coin, while Tesla still holds $1.99 billion worth of bitcoin. Tesla explained in its annual report that they believe that digital assets such as Bitcoin have long-term potential as an investment and cash substitute, so they can increase or decrease their holdings of Bitcoin at any time in accordance with market trends and business development needs. However, the annual report also acknowledges that digital assets such as Bitcoin have indeed been affected by market price fluctuations and have caused damage to the company's interests, and will adjust investment strategies to adapt to risk challenges in the future.
Tesla's loss due to the fall in the price of Bitcoin has attracted widespread attention, although Tesla's profit in 2021 is as high as $5.519 billion, and the loss of a mere $101 million is not worth mentioning. But as a pioneer in electric vehicles and digital assets, Tesla or Musk is playing a game in "speculating in coins", and the chain reaction may exceed people's expectations. After all, the development experience of digital assets is very unique, from the beginning of no one's interest, to the later value of the city, its appreciation space exceeds any previous investment products. It is this special experience that gives digital assets a strong speculative nature. In fact, the rise of Bitcoin and other digital currencies is inseparable from Tesla's first announcement of accepting Bitcoin payments, as well as Musk's own advocacy. If Tesla abandons Bitcoin for some reason, it is likely to bring about a new wave of downbearing bitcoin, and the consequences are self-evident.
It is worth noting that the recent downward trend of bitcoin is still continuing, and due to factors such as the possible end of quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve, the price of bitcoin fell to $35,000 per coin in January this year, the lowest value since July last year. For these reasons, UK regulators have issued warnings to investors to be fully aware of the regulations governing cryptocurrencies, while the European Union and Russia's central banks have directly called for a ban on cryptocurrencies or "mining". Many experts believe that with the increasingly strict supervision, cryptocurrencies represented by Bitcoin may collapse rapidly.
At the same time, Tesla's domestic revenue is rising sharply. According to the annual report, Tesla generated about $13.8 billion in revenue in the mainland market in 2021, compared with only $6.6 billion in 2020 and only $2.9 billion in 2019. In other words, in the past 2 years, Tesla's revenue has more than quadrupled, doubling on average every year. The most critical thing is that the overall gross profit margin of Tesla's auto business has risen to 29.3% in 2021, several times more than traditional auto companies, which means that the voice of the auto business within Tesla will be further expanded.
Some analysts pointed out that the prosperity of the new energy vehicle market may enable tesla and other technology companies to taste the sweetness of manufacturing, so as to abandon speculation on virtual assets such as cryptocurrencies. The loss of more than $100 million caused by Bitcoin to Tesla may become an opportunity to trigger an avalanche in the cryptocurrency field.