This Seems Like A Really Big Fucking Deal: Tesla Buys $1.5 Billion In Bitcoin And Says They Want To Start Accepting It As Payment
TESLA 10-K filing for fiscal year 2020
I don't have a strong track record blogging footnote disclosures from routine SEC filings but I'll take another crack regardless. It's not a passion but I speak the language so let's move this story forward by taking just a few steps back.
Tesla is a publicly traded company. That means a lot of things but for purposes of this blog it means they have to file a bunch of fancy paperwork with Uncle Sam. This paperwork has to be signed off by 3rd parties (accountants and their sub-contractors) because it's information used to invest and make decisions by the "general public" and very demanding institutional investors like HEDGE FUNDS.
These reports come in a lot of shapes and sizes but for today's lesson you can think about the 10-Q, which is Quarterly, and then the 10-K, which is Annual. You do four 10-Q's a year. They show your financial statements (balance sheet, income, cash flows and ratios) as they come in over time vs. projections. It's like a quarterly progress report. Then the K is the final report card on how you did with a lot of context about how you project to do in the future. A report card that cares.
Warren Buffet loves these things because they come with explanations of how the company operates and makes decisions and a bunch of other justifications for why things the way they are. These are generally in the footnotes. The footnotes disclose a bunch of really important shit. Often times the rulebook will say something like You have plenty of options on how to calculate XYZ but you're required by law to explain why you do what you do in the footnotes. So even if you're not a numbers person, you can get a feel for what's going on if you spend a minute in the footnotes. You can learn if a company is assholes and scumbags, or if they're investing in the future or whatever. That's where you go to figure things out.
And now that we're all caught up on the setting and format, you should be happy to know that Tesla disclosed in their 10-K footnotes (everybody knows what that means) that they bought $1.5 billion in bitcoin in what appears to be the most bro-to-bro unifying partnership in some time. Tesla and Bitcoin. The future is officially here and while I say that in jest it's actually kind of the reality. Tesla also said they want to take Bitcoin as payment. Mix that with the recent news that Biden wants to convert the entire federal fleet to electric and you start to connect some big boy dots here. If you want to though. Only if you want to.
Personally I'm not even close to having enough money to pretend to give a fuck about either of these things. I would love to get into Bitcoin per se but I'm also trying to buy new golf clubs this year. I would love to buy a Tesla and be sweet but I'm still paying off a Subaru Legacy with 71,000 hard earned midwestern midmarket sales miles on it. I confess I may not be your best messenger here. But really regardless of who's talking, you should know that this is a big fucking deal.
Meanwhile in the treasury department.
Honestly though it would be awesome if they reinvested Bitcoin capital gains in more frunk space. People forget this is actually Tesla's greatest innovation