Reddit User Claiming To Be Tesla Insider Appeared To Reveal Bitcoin Buy a Month Ago

A Reddit user claiming to be a Tesla insider appeared to announce the carmaker's purchase of bitcoin a month ago, according to a January post on the platform that said the electric carmaker had bought $800 million worth of Bitcoin. Reuters reports: The post here received little attention when it appeared, with the date on it reading Jan. 2, but it is getting a second look now, a day after the electric carmaker, led by Elon Musk, disclosed a $1.5-billion investment in the cryptocurrency, sending Bitcoin to fresh highs. "I am a software dev working at R&D at Tesla in California, over the past 72 hours our company bought 24701 BTC at an average price of 33142$," a user with the handle TSLAinsider posted in the bitcoin subreddit. "I have no idea what will happen once this reaches the newspapers but I think the price will explode even more," the user wrote.

Moderators in r/Tesla, a subreddit dedicated to posts on the electric carmaker, appeared to remove the post here. It was left up in r/bitcoin, where the cryptocurrency is discussed. Reuters could not verify the user's identity, whether the user is a Tesla employee or whether the post was modified from the original. Tesla did not immediately respond to an email to its press office. [...] As the post was focused on bitcoin, the tipper may benefit from a gray area in oversight and enforcement, as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) does not treat the cryptocurrency as a security, one expert said.

Creepy reddit placeholder

[Anonymous Coward]

"Moderators remove posts from feeds for a variety of reasons, including keeping communities safe, civil, and true to their purpose."

Re: Creepy reddit placeholder

[link-error]

Well, they still had another $700B to buy, so Tesla probably told him to remove it in order to protect the price. Still, I see nothing illegal about this.

Re:

[bloodhawk]

It gets into a very quasi legal area around insider trading, even with crypto not being regulated, Tesla IS regulated and needs to be releasing financial information through their official channels in a fair and equitable manner. An employee posting financial data or using that inside knowledge for financial gain is breaching a lot of rules..

Re:

[Rei]

It was also fake [yahoo.com].

Re:

[bgarcia]

him saying now it was a hoax doesn't make it so.

Dude, they tracked him down. He's not even a Tesla employee. He's a German political science student.

Why are some people so quick to believe a troll post with no corroboration, but find it impossible to believe the truth when it is later revealed?

Is this a prelude to the cars mining cryptos?

[doug141]

If the cars can play the latest pc games, they can also mine cryptocurrencies. Crypto mining on your car can become part of a fee structure. Can anyone calculate how many teslas need to be mining bitcoin for a 51% attack?

Re:

[Dan East]

They mine bitcoins while you're braking.

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[istartedi]

That might be one time it makes sense, assuming that the batteries can't take the full charge from heavy braking. I doubt that though. How does regeneration from heavy braking compare to supercharging? If there's no excess power, any power used to mine comes out of the range performance for the car. You buy a Tesla to drive, not mine, so it seems like a non-starter. I think Tesla researchers would be putting effort into full capture of energy rather than fitting a mining rig.

I think it might make more

Good for them

[Krishnoid]

At least they're spending their money in the best interest of the shareholders or somebody, if not the employees [pionline.com].

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[Rei]

This is so much nonsense. Tesla is the only automaker in the US that pays its employees true stock options, which has made long-term employees rich. Go on, ask employees yourself [twitter.com].

That said: bitcoin can go die in a ditch for all I care. Exactly what sort of message does it send that the CEO of a publicly traded company would prefer to buy bitcoin as an "investment" than the company's own stock? Might as well put out an ad stating, "Don't buy our stock; buy Bitcoin instead."

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[stephanruby]

It's called diversifying your portfolio.

With that said, Elon Musk is not going through a wallet company (that could decide to steal his coins if they wanted), he probably has a good system in place to not lose his passwords or his keys, and he probably has an Estate that can recover his passwords for his inheritors in case he dies prematurely.

Anyone else who doesn't have those three elements in place should not bother with bitcoins at all.

Re:Good for them

[Rei]

It's called diversifying your portfolio

Apparently I missed the part where Tesla became a hedge fund.

Manufacturing companies are not supposed to have "portfolios". Cash is supposed to be kept in low-risk products only so it's available when you need it. If you have excess money that you don't know how to spend within your business activities, you're supposed to either dividend it back to shareholders (who can then invest it in whatever they want) or purchase your company's shares back (has the same wealth-transfer effect). You're not supposed to invest on behalf of your shareholders; a company that's not an investment firm making volatile speculative investments with its cash is highly abnormal. And again, it sends a clear message that the CEO thinks they'll get a better return on bitcoin than on their own internal business activities. Which should be a flashing red flag to investors.

All this said: Elon has heavy influence on the board, but he only controls a fifth of the stock. Shareholders can overrule him with a >60-40 vote on a shareholder resolution. Which is how I hope this will end.

Re: Good for them

[link-error]

You are confusing "typically" with "must".

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[ghoul]

They need to hold a certain amount of cash to protect their stock through buybacks in the case of a short attack. However USD is not a safe currency given how much QE has happened. At any moment there could be a step change in the value of the dollar. it will happen over a weekend when markets are closed. Putting some of the cash protects them from any sudden crash in the USD as it would be balanced by the corresponding rise in the value of the BTC. So for Tesla putting money into BTC is not risky speculati

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[Rei]

They need to hold a certain amount of cash to protect their stock through buybacks in the case of a short attack. However USD is not a safe currency given how much QE has happened. At any moment there could be a step change in the value of the dollar. it will happen over a weekend when markets are close

BTC advocates remind me so much of Q-Anon.

"The US is in hyperinflation!"
(shows a graph of US inflation rates)
"They're hiding the true inflation rate!"

FYI: Quantitative easing isn't a technique to hide inflati

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[vyvepe]

The fed buys financial assets. In the normal scenario, the value of the assets is fully realized, and there's no cost to the QE (or even profit from it); that is to say, usually the assets purchased are secure ones, like US government bonds.

It is a classic example of printing money when a central bank buys government bonds. Whether it will actually result in a hyperinflation is a question of whether the government will be able to scale down its expenses when the inflation starts to rise significantly. There is no other way to avoid hyperinflation. Fed itself will not be able to lower the money supply on its own by increasing interest rates. Government will need to lower its expenses. The question is whether it will be able to do it without ris

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[Rei]

The government in effect paying bonds early is not "printing money". The money was owed either way - that's what a bond is. And with US national debt held by the public equal to just one year of GDP (and a small extra amount in intergovernmental holdings), the US isn't even remotely close to defaulting on its debt (e.g. the scenario that if approached would actually cause large-scale inflation).

The notion of "imminent hyperinflation" is a myth. Sheer fantasy, invented to support your digital-collectibles

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[vyvepe]

A bond is useless when it is denominated in a currency which is under a rapid inflation. Nobody except a manipulated central bank will buy such a bond. And if it does so then it is pure printing of money. It is not printing of money only when the bond will be payed and the nominal currency will not inflate more than the bond interest by the payment time.

I agree that the US is not close to defaulting now. There is no reason to panic while inflation is low. I did not claim "imminent hyperinflation" is due. Bu

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[ghoul]

This might be true of a country which has its own currency. it is not true of the US which prints the currency of international trade. The US can print as much money as it wants and export away the inflation. No inflation and unlimited money means it never has to scale down govt. it also means it can fund the worlds largest military and have bases in 150 countries around the world. Which in turn means the world will continue to use USD as its trade currency even if it causes inflation and reduces living sta

Re:

[ghoul]

You have a major assumption - The fed is buying secure assets like US Bonds. US Bonds may not be looked upon as secure when US is increasing its debt by 3 Trillion and would have had to pay higher interest rates to get borrowers. The Fed buying it keeps them "looking" like secure assets and the interest rates stay low. Some of these actions are like self fulfilling prophecies. Something is secure if people will buy it at low rates. if it is now secure than buying it at low rates made sense. So it does not

Re:

[Lisandro]

Sorry, this is not "diversifying portfolio". BTC is, today, nothing but a high risk, speculative asset investment.

I know that companies like Tesla having large sums of cash laying around is actually a problem, but growing portfolios is not really something a car company should be doing at all to begin with. I really wonder what investors, and the board, will have to say about this.

Interesting timing

[Netdoctor]

Note that the current surge on Bitcoin started about a month ago, almost to the day of this leak.

Seems a few in the know took liberties.

2020 hindsight

[istartedi]

You always have to put yourself back in time, and realize that you would have read it and rolled your eyes: "It was on the Internet, so it must be true". For every one that does come true, there are thousands or more that don't. They all look the same when you see them. You can't tell the difference until after the fact.

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[gweihir]

Indeed. Confirmation-bias at work.