Tesla moved nearly its entire Bitcoin stash, worth nearly $780 million, to new wallets last week, causing some market volatility, but the BTC remains unsold and is believed to still be owned by Tesla.
Bitcoin has been redistributed into several wallets, with the largest holding between $121 million and $142 million in BTC.
Tesla continues to hold its bitcoin stash, having recently moved coins to new wallets in a move that sparked fears of liquidation, on-chain intelligence Arkham said in a Wednesday post.
The Elon Musk-owned company shifted nearly its entire stash of 11509 BTC, worth $776 million, to new wallets last week, leading to short-term price volatility and fears of forthcoming selling pressure.
But those wallets continue to hold that BTC and haven’t sent any to crypto exchanges as of Wednesday, which is usually a sign of intention to liquidate holdings.
“We believe that the Tesla wallet movements that we reported on last week were wallet rotations with the Bitcoin still owned by Tesla,” Arkham said on X. “The Bitcoin has been split between 7 wallets holding 1100 and 2200 BTC. All holding wallets received test transactions, and all but one hold a round number of BTC.”
The three biggest wallets hold $142 million, $128 million and $121 million in BTC individually, while the smallest holds $74 million.
“Some have speculated that this is a movement to a custodian, for example to secure a loan against the BTC,” Arkham added in its post.
A CoinDesk analysis noted that the reasons for bitcoin movements include wallet management, internal audits, restructuring of funds, and consolidation of UTXOs (unspent transaction outputs).
Tesla is yet to publicly comment on its decision to move bitcoin. The company is set for its Q3 earnings call at 5:30 pm UTC on Wednesday – where analysts expect a 0.60 EPS (USD) and information about its bitcoin holdings could be made public.
