Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of the most successful EV Tesla company has sold another 1.2 million in TSLA stocks worth $1.2 billion. Musk has offloaded a total of $6.9 billion worth of his company’s stocks over the past week, making it the largest ever stock disposal by the CEO of any company.
It all started with Musk pledging to sell 10% of his Tesla stocks to prove a point against unrealized gains and tax avoidance. He also conducted a Twitter poll along with its asking whether he should unload 10% of his company’s stocks where 57.9% of people voted in favor of the idea. Musk’s take on unrealized gains and tax avoidance comes as he became the richest man on earth and also the first to have over $300 billion net worth.
Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock.
Do you support this?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 6, 2021
As Musk began offloading his Tesla stocks at the start of this week, speculation mills were rife as in what he would do with the money. Earlier, Musk generally sold his company’s stocks for tax purposes as he mentioned later in the tweet as well, claiming he doesn’t get paid in cash or bonus, thus the only way for him to pay taxes is via selling his stocks.
Note, I do not take a cash salary or bonus from anywhere. I only have stock, thus the only way for me to pay taxes personally is to sell stock.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 6, 2021
The Twitter poll didn’t turn out well for the market value of the $TSLA shares as it plunged right after the results of the poll came in and Musk also confirmed he will abide by it. Musk’s 10% share in Tesla comes about $25 billion and after this week’s sale, he is still the largest shareholder in the company.
Michael Saylor Advices Musk to Buy Bitcoin From His Tesla Stock Sales
Microstrategy CEO Michael Saylor is a well-known Bitcoin proponent and also takes credit for pursuing Musk and Tesla to buy Bitcoin. Saylor advised Musk to invest the proceeds of his 10% Tesla share sales towards Bitcoin.
“If the goal is diversification, an alternate strategy to consider is converting the TSLA balance sheet to a Bitcoin Standard and purchasing $25 billion in BTC.” said Saylor
Tesla has more than doubled its profit on a $1 billion bitcoin purchase after Bitcoin hit new all-time highs last week. Thus, a Bitcoin investment