The market valuation of bitcoin briefly exceeded that of Tesla after the electric automaker announced Monday it had purchased $1.5 billion of the largest cryptocurrency for its treasury.
- After Tesla filed its annual report with the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission disclosing the purchase, shares of bitcoin took off, setting a new all-time high of $44,801.87.
- Bitcoin's market value naturally rose as well, increasing to $834.2 billion and making the cryptocurrency more valuable than all but seven of the world's publicly traded companies, just ahead of Tesla with its market cap of $820.7 billion.
- The price of bitcoin has since given back some of its gains, trading hands at press time at $42,964.05, up 11.78% in the last 24 hours.
- That retreat has allowed Tesla to reclaim the seventh spot, leaving bitcoin in eighth place, still ahead of Facebook ($756.4 billion), which the cryptocurrency also passed on Monday.
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