Tesla and Spacex CEO Elon Musk has asked his Twitter followers whether he should sell his Tesla stock. Many people are urging Musk to sell his Tesla shares and invest money in cryptocurrency, especially bitcoin.
Elon Musk Asks Twitter Followers to Decide Whether to Sell His Tesla Shares; Most Said Yes
Tesla CEO Elon Musk set up a poll on Twitter Saturday asking his 62.7 million followers to decide whether he should sell 10% of his Tesla stock. “There has been a lot of talk lately about unrealized gains as a means of tax evasion, so I am proposing to sell 10% of my Tesla shares. Do you support this? Musk tweeted.
In a follow-up tweet, he noted that he “doesn’t take cash pay or bonuses from anywhere,” highlighting, “I only have stocks, so the only way I can pay is taxes personally is to sell shares “. The Tesla boss also promised:
I will abide by the results of this poll, whichever way it goes.
Musk’s poll garnered a lot of media attention. It received more than 3.5 million votes, of which 57.9% said “Yes”. The tweet was liked 111.5K times and retweeted 22.1K times.
On Friday, Congress passed the $1.2 trillion U.S. Infrastructure bill after chopping down its hotly-debated tax plan on unrealized capital gains aimed at billionaires. This part of the bill has been turned into a separate $ 1.9 trillion bill that will be voted on later.
The Tesla boss, now the world’s richest man with a net worth of at least $318.4 billion according to Forbes’ list of billionaires, has made several tweets criticizing the bill over the past few weeks.
Many bitcoiners jumped in on the poll to express their opinions to Musk. A number of people have suggested that Musk use the proceeds from the sale of his TSLA shares to buy BTC. For example, Microstrategy CEO Michael Saylor suggested: “If the goal is diversification, an alternate strategy to consider is converting the TSLA balance sheet to a Bitcoin Standard and purchasing $25 billion in BTC. This would provide diversification, inflation protection and more benefits for all investors in a tax-efficient manner. “
Former Tesla employee Michael Rihani, now working as the crypto product lead at Jack Dorsey’s company Square Inc., tweeted to his old boss:
Yes, sell to receive over US $ 10 billion and buy bitcoin with it. You’ll turn that $10B+ into $100B+ and can use the proceeds to (1) increase the odds of fulfilling the Tesla and Spacex missions and (2) helping even more people and countries.
Some of Musk’s followers are hoping that Tesla’s billionaire will invest money in the cryptocurrency’s dogecoin itself. Musk, also known as the Dogefather, has long been a supporter of DOGE, calling it “the people’s crypto.” He recently revealed that he personally owns three cryptocurrencies: bitcoin, ether, and dogecoin.
Not everyone was happy about the poll, however. Some were concerned that selling 10% of Musk’s Tesla position will tank the TSLA stock’s price on Monday morning. Others thought it was just a bad idea to let Twitter users decide what to do with so much wealth.
U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, chair of the Senate Finance Committee who is behind the unrealized gains tax provision, responded to Musk’s poll Saturday evening:
Whether or not the richest man in the world pays taxes shouldn’t depend on the results of a Twitter poll. It’s billionaire income tax time.
Last week, Musk offered to sell his Tesla shares if it would solve the world hunger problem. Responding to a comment from the director of the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) that 2% of its wealth could solve world hunger, Musk wrote: “If WFP can describe on this Twitter thread exactly how 6 billion dollars will solve world hunger, I will sell Tesla shares right away and do it. However, he emphasized: “But it must be open source accounting, so the public sees precisely how the money is spent.”
Musk’s stake in Tesla stood at around 170.5 million shares as of June 30. Selling 10% of his stock would amount to about $21 billion based on Tesla’s current stock price.
