Daily Market Recap - Tesla's Bitcoin Purchases Leaked On Reddit A Month Before They Were Made Official

A member of the Reddit community posing as a developer at Tesla revealed a month ago that the Californian company had started buying bitcoin. “I have no idea what will happen once this reaches the newspapers but I think the price will explode even more,” he said in a message that is still visible.

“Are you legally authorized, however, to disclose this information before they announce it？”. Of course not, that's why I use Tor [a browser that allows you to surf the Internet without being tracked]. This exchange in Reddit's Bitcoin subforum should not fail to attract the attention of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Passed unnoticed more than a month ago, a message published on the community platform (since made famous by the WallStreetBets/GameStop affair) had indeed revealed to some people the strategy officialized on Monday by the Californian manufacturer to invest a significant part of its cash in Bitcoin.

In the late evening of Saturday, January 2 (in the United States), according to a post deleted Tuesday, a user calling himself TSLAinsider (which could be read as “an insider at Tesla”) revealed that the company had acquired roughly 800 million dollars of Bitcoin.

His announcement was not taken seriously at the time by some users, while others were concerned about such a display. To which TSLAinsider replied that he could not be recognized, not actually working directly in the team in charge of these operations, and that the information was known to many employees.

On Monday, February 8, in its annual (“10-K”) filings with the SEC, Tesla announced that it had acquired a total of $1.5 billion in bitcoins in January, as part of an “update of the group's investment policy” aimed at giving itself more flexibility “to further diversify and maximize the return on cash” in excess of the level deemed adequate to meet the group's operational requirements.

As predicted by the famous TSLAinsider, the announcement did not fail to cause a new explosion in the BTC share price, which has now soared over 20% to reach a new historical record of around 48,000 US dollars per bitcoin.

(Photo Source: Reddit 09.02.2021)

(Chart Source: Tradingview 09.02.2021)

What all this leaves us with is a big question on whether or not blogs like Reddit should be given more importance in our everyday market research. People are rightly starting to realize the value in rummaging through online forums in order to find hidden investment gems. After the GME, AMC, Silver, and now Dogecoin episodes, it seems clear now that there is inherent value in taking the effort to look into these non-traditional sources of information as this new trend of ‘retail traders’ looks set to stay.

Disclaimer: This material has been created for information purposes only. All views expressed in this document are my own and do not necessarily represent the opinions of any entity.