The company said that its digital assets have shrunk to $218 million, and that the weakness of this currency hurt the profitability of the second quarter.

Tesla sold a large portion of its bitcoin holdings at a loss, an investment that helped legitimize the world’s largest cryptocurrency.

Tesla said in the company’s earnings report that it sold about 75% of its bitcoins, adding about $936 million in cash to the budget.

The electric car maker revealed in February 2021 that it had invested $1.5 billion in Bitcoin, and subsequently sold 10% of the cryptocurrency in April. The company said Wednesday that its digital assets have shrunk to $218 million, and that the currency’s weakness hurt second-quarter profitability.

Bitcoin has fallen from a record low of nearly $69,000 in November.

The largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization gave up gains after Tesla disclosed that it sold the cryptocurrency, dropping 1.6 percent to $22,928.

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, has become a huge influence in the cryptocurrency space. He supported Dogecoin by tweeting an alternative, and posted pictures of his dog, Volki, who was the mascot of Dogecoin and Shiba Inu. And when Tesla threw a huge party for its new factory in Austin in April, drones carried a Doge Queen image.

Musk’s embrace of bitcoin acted as a catalyst for the digital currency after Tesla briefly accepted the use of the tokenized cryptocurrency to buy its vehicles, but later suspended the payment option, citing environmental concerns about its mining operations.

Despite this, Musk has positioned himself as a supporter of cryptocurrency, hinting in recent weeks that his other company, SpaceX, may join Tesla in accepting Dogecoin to buy merchandise in the future.

It is worth noting that MicroStrategy is one of the main companies that have bought quantities of “Bitcoin”. Its shares fell by about 4% in the evening trading after the market closed. At the end of the second quarter, the value of the company’s holding of the cryptocurrency was about $3.4 billion less than it had been previously.

Rough estimates suggest that Tesla sold bitcoin at roughly $30,000 per unit, while keeping $218 million in digital assets on its balance sheet, according to calculations by Josh Olsewitz, head of research at cryptocurrency management fund Valkyrie Investments. (Valkyrie Investments). “It is possible that severely bearish market conditions since the beginning of the year, in addition to the need for cash on the balance sheet, contributed to [Tesla’s] decision,” Olsevich says. “From a Treasury management perspective, negative volatility was probably too unattractive to ignore in the near term.”