Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of the world’s most successful electric vehicle firm, has sold another $1.2 billion worth of TSLA stock. Musk has sold a total of $6.9 billion worth of his company’s stock in the last week, making it the largest stock sale by a CEO in history
How It All Began
Musk began by offering to sell 10% of his Tesla stock to demonstrate his opposition to unrealized profits and tax avoidance. He also conducted a Twitter poll in conjunction with it, asking if he should sell 10% of his company’s stock, which received 57.9% of the vote in favor of the concept.
Musk’s stance on unrealized profits and tax avoidance comes after he became the world’s richest man and the first to have a net worth of more than $300 billion.
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
At the outset of this week, when Musk began selling his Tesla stock, speculation about what he would do with the proceeds was intense. Musk has previously sold his company’s shares for tax purposes, as he highlighted later in the tweet, stating that because he isn’t paid in cash or bonus, selling his stock is the only method for him to pay taxes.
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 market value of $TSLA shares plummeted immediately after the results of the Twitter vote were announced, and Musk stated that he would abide by it. Musk’s 10% stake in Tesla is worth nearly $25 billion, and despite this week’s transaction, he remains the company’s largest stakeholder.
Michael Saylor advises Musk to invest in Bitcoin with the proceeds from his Tesla stock sales
Michael Saylor, the CEO of Microstrategy, is a well-known Bitcoin supporter who also claims credit for persuading Musk and Tesla to buy Bitcoin. Saylor encouraged Musk to put the proceeds from his 10% Tesla stock sale into 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
After Bitcoin achieved new all-time highs last week, Tesla has more than doubled its profit on a $1 billion bitcoin buy.
