What Tesla did with bitcoin could be considered market manipulation, and that's a serious crime considered by the US government. The fact that the company invested $1.5B and make it public that bring a lot of investors to bitcoin, and after that, we see how bitcoin has a crazy jump in the prize, and now they sold the 10% when bitcoin was on its ATH.
As a reference, I will leave this link:
https://www.fbi.gov/scams-and-safety/common-scams-and-crimes/market-manipulation-pump-and-dump-fraudSo, the question is, did tesla make market manipulation and you think the company will be charged for it?
Honestly, I didn't know that pump and dump was illegal. I mean, surely it's a morally questionable and harmful strategy, but making it illegal seems a little far-fetched to me. And isn't it what guys on Wall Street do all the time? Isn't it how trading largely works?
In any case, Tesla invested in BTC and announced it. This definitely doesn't qualify as anything illegal. And any company has the right to cash out on investments whenever they see fit.
Besides, Bitcoin is not low on trading volume, so I don't think investments into it can lead to legal action.
I agree and it is only so controversial because it's about Elon Musk. If it was some average dude with maybe just a hundred million net worth nobody would even be discussing such tweets. I fully agree that it's controversial but so what? Send Musk to jail for communicating his opinion? It is a problematic case but he wouldn't b doing what he is doing if he wasn't certain that nothing can be done to him in terms of manipulation and the applicable laws.