Are we allowed to talk about Bitcoin?

It definitely moved the price when they bought. ... it had less to do with a whale buying a lot than the fact that the the whole bitcoin trade was momentum / sentiment based, on nothing fundamental, and all it took was Twitter lighting up with the keywords: "Elon Musk" and "bitcoin" to create an insane buying panic.

Then Musk's behavior afterward, pumped the price further up. It had all the hallmarks of a bubble / leverage-induced price ramp. And it would have been really shitty if he had been rewarded by being able to dump at a huge profit after being the main reason for the pump part of a pump and dump.

Thankfully, Tesla's sale was at a loss (if you find that to be just). They probably averaged just over $30K per bitcoin and sold somewhere around an average of $20K or $21K. I am sure the reasons for selling were multifacited, but the company is flailing now. ... Musk's bullshit could stem a decline in the stock in the past, even as he was diluting the existing equity over and over again to raise more and more money (while the company lost money). Now? His bullshit is starting to have the exact opposite effect. The only thing that made the company cashflow positive for the quarter was those bitcoin sales. Margins are shrinking, and even though they are selling a lot of cars, they are not really earning anything on those sales. The obvious reason to have sold was that he was afraid that bitcoin is going to drop even further, but I wouldn't put it past him to have thought he could reach into his carnival barker bag of tricks and try to create a cash flow positive income statement thinking it might pump the stock price up again. But who knows?

The sale was probably positive for bitcoin in the new environment. Markets are recognizing that Musk is unstable, and bitcoin is unstable at this point -- sentiment has the potential to drive huge price moves still (to the downside in particular, undoing the crazy sentiment that pumped it up). With Musk / Tesla largely out, it may be having the odd effect of calming people and keeping any potential negative sentiment in check.