Just a year ago Elon Musk was a championing cryptocurrencies to the point of decisively influencing their share price with every statement or investment he made.

His decision to accept bitcoins as a method of payment for Tesla cars was very widely spoken of.

However, a year later, Tesla have sold 75 percent of their bitcoin following a drastic slump in their price. In 2021, Musk compared the crypto currency to “diamonds” but his latest actions suggest that his opinion has changed.

In the first half of 2022, the price of the virtual currency has fallen by more than 50pc. On January 1, it was exchanged for 47,738 dollars and on July 20 it closed at 23,215 dollars and it is now a long way away from its maximum price, which was above 65,000 dollars.

However, it seems that Tesla’s experiment with bitcoin has not turned out to be entirely successful.

Their initial investment in 2021, 1.5 billion dollars, has yielded just 936 million dollars according to data provided by the BBC.

Musk has played it down as a “secondary” operation within Tesla’s global financial movements, which may negatively affect the price of the cryptocurrency.

Tesla’s revenue continues to grow

The silver lining in Tesla’s financials has come in the form of increased revenues in the second quarter of the year.

During this period Tesla revenues have risen to 16.9 billion dollars, which represents a record and goes above the expectations of the company’s investors.

For reference, in the same period of the previous year that figure amounted to 11.9 billion dollars.

In the second quarter of 2012 – a decade ago – the American electric car brand’s revenue was 27 million dollars.

[Marca]