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Comment by rvz | Hacker News Reader

Yes. A very clever plan, executed to perfection.

We don't know the price point of the BTC they bought at the time but it is likely to be somewhere around $30,000 - $40,000 and then they announced it to cause a run up close to $60,000 and then sold some of it for a >$101m profit.

Now they somehow 'stop accepting Bitcoin' causing BTC to go down 12%.

These same institutions are NOT interested in hodling. They are here to make money off of their BTC investment with only risking a small amount and cashing out 10% of it, while the retail investor hodls for their life savings at all time highs again.

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> executed to perfection

Except they still own nearly all the Bitcoin they bought, so I don’t see how selling a tiny bit of it and tanking the rest could be described as “to perfection”.

> Except they still own a ton of Bitcoin

No where in my sentence suggested they sold all of it.

> so I don’t see how selling a tiny bit of it could be described as “to perfection”

Telsa did not lose any money from their BTC investment and are still up >40%. At that time, they (and others on Twitter) caused a run up in the crypto markets to drive the BTC price up to new all time highs and got out a large profit even by selling a small amount and then causing it to drop 12% after the announcement, sounds like it was perfectly executed and it worked for them.

Why is it clever to tank an asset that they own?

How did the 12% drop benefit Tesla?

You're not making any sense.

edit: nevermind

Did you read the tweet?

Perhaps because only that amount could be sold for a good enough price? Someone has to buy it and a sudden increase in supply will drive the price down, that amount is not a single transaction with fixed price.

None of that was an answer to any of my questions. Specifically, how did talking down Bitcoin benefit Tesla? I don't understand how that move plays into Tesla's hands.

Selling some at a good price, wait/manipulate it back up again, sell some more, repeat. You can’t liquidate the whole thing at the same time.

That's still not an answer to my question. Specifically, how did talking down Bitcoin benefit Tesla? That step didn't feature in your hypothesised manipulation strategy.

A 12% drop isnt ‘tanking Bitcoin’, it’s barely more than normal daily fluctuations in the crazy casino of crypto.

That's true.

> Why is it clever to tank an asset that they own?

It's not but that doesn't mean Musk won't do it anyway. He once tanked his own company's stock by smoking cannabis in public. After something like that anything is possible.

Stock market investors don’t care, because they’re in it for the long term. It’s the stock market gamblers who bitch and moan, even though they’re the ones who actually cause these fluctuations by reacting to superficial, fleeting news stories which have no bearing on the underlying asset.

> while the retail investor hodls for their life savings at all time highs again.

Said all this after the 2017/8 peak. Called people idiots for buying BTC at $20k. Laughed when it plummeted.

Who's laughing now.

Hard to say - many were liquidated on the way down, may more sold in frustration. I'd suspect a ton of people lost a ton of money on the way down in 2017/8. They're not laughing.

> Who's laughing now.

I am and those who bought BTC when it fell to less than $5000 or $7000 for sometime in a while since it reached its ATH in 2017. That was the chance for new comers to buy into crypto in March 2020.

No-one who bought at those lows lost any money. Only those buying at ATHs and selling now. Thus they are forced to HODL and wait for it to go up again.

And now it's 2021, the new ATH for BTC is $60K and as for many alt-coins thanks to Elon and the Twitter crypto hypers, all the alts are flying and NOW the new retail investors are buying into crypto today, which is a dangerous sign of a pull back later.

Might as well take some profits off the table. Just like what Tesla did and many others in the smart money.

So yes, I'm always laughing at those buying right now in all time highs when I keep hitting that sell button.

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