(Reuters) – Elon Musk asked Sunday about the possibility of converting “large transactions” from Tesla Inc’s balance sheet into bitcoin, according to a Twitter exchange between Musk and a well-known proponent of the digital currency.
Michael Saylor, chief executive officer of MicroStrategy Inc, tweeted to Musk that the founder and head of billionaire Tesla would take the step.
“If you want to do your shareholders a favor of $ 100 billion, convert the $ TSLA balance from USD to #BTC,” Saylor wrote in his tweet. “Other companies on the S&P 500 would follow your lead, and over time this would grow to a $ 1 trillion favor.”
“Are such large transactions even possible?” Musk replied Saylor.
“Yes. I’ve bought over $ 1.3 billion in #BTC in the last few months and would love to share my playbook with you guys offline …,” tweeted Saylor.
Tesla and Musk could not be reached for comment.
“Every CEO faces the challenge of maintaining and increasing shareholder value in the face of this year’s unprecedented monetary expansion,” Saylor said in a message to Reuters.
“Bitcoin is the best solution to the problem of storage of value facing every individual, investor and business on Earth,” said Saylor.
Tesla shares rose to a record high on Friday in a hectic trading day as investors prepared for the electric carmaker’s long-awaited entry into the benchmark S&P 500 index on Monday.
Bitcoin surged to a high of $ 24,299.75 on Sunday after first passing the $ 20,000 milestone last week amid rising interest from larger investors. Bitcoin was last at $ 23.60.98, up 2.88%.
Reporting by Suzanne Barlyn; edited by Diane Craft