Elon Musk Lets Twitter Poll Decide Whether He Should Sell $20 Billion in Tesla Stock – Investors Suggest Buying Bitcoin – News

Tesla and Spacex CEO Elon Musk has asked his Twitter followers whether he should sell his Tesla shares. He has also promised to abide by the survey results. 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 conducted a poll on Twitter on Saturday asking his 62.7 million followers whether he should sell 10% of his Tesla shares. "There's been a lot of talk lately about unrealized gains being a way to avoid taxes, so I'm proposing to sell 10% of my Tesla shares. Do you support that?" Musk tweeted.

In a follow-up tweet, he noted that he "does not receive a cash salary or bonus from anywhere" and stressed, "I only have stocks, so the only way I can personally pay the taxes is by selling stocks." The Tesla boss also promised:

I will abide by the results of this survey no matter which way it goes.

Musk's survey has attracted a lot of media attention. She 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 infrastructure bill after cutting the hotly debated unrealized capital gains tax plan aimed at billionaires. That portion of the bill was spun off into a separate $1.9 trillion bill to be voted on later.

The Tesla boss, who is now the richest man in the world with a net worth of at least $318.4 billion according to the Forbes billionaires list, posted several tweets criticize the bill in the last few weeks.

Many Bitcoiners jumped into the poll thread to express their opinion towards Musk. A number of people suggested that Musk used the proceeds from the sale of his TSLA shares Buy BTC. For example, Microstrategy CEO Michael Saylor suggested: “If the goal is diversification, an alternative strategy to consider is converting the TSLA balance sheet to a Bitcoin standard and purchasing $25 billion BTC. This would provide diversification, inflation protection and more upside potential to all investors in a tax efficient manner.”

Former Tesla employee Michael Rihani, who now works as head of crypto products at Jack Dorsey's Square Inc., tweeted to his old boss:

Yes, sell to get $10B+ USD and use it to buy Bitcoin. They will use these 10 billion.

Some of Musk's followers are hoping that the Tesla billionaire will put some money into the meme cryptocurrency Dogecoin. Musk, also known as the Dogefather, has long been a... fan of DOGE and calls it “the people’s crypto”. He recently revealed that he personally owns three cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, Ether and Dogecoin.

But not everyone was satisfied with the survey. Some were concerned that Musk's sale of 10% of Tesla's position would depress TSLA's stock price Monday morning. Others thought it was just a bad idea to let Twitter users decide what to do with so much wealth.

U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which is behind the unrealized gains tax provision, responded to Musk's poll Saturday night:

Whether or not the richest man in the world pays taxes at all shouldn't depend on the results of a Twitter poll. It's time for the billionaires' income tax.

Last week, Musk offered to sell his Tesla shares if it would solve world hunger. In response to a comment from the director of the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) that 2% of his wealth could solve world hunger, Musk wrote: "If WFP can accurately describe in this Twitter thread how 6 billion I will sell Tesla shares immediately and do it." However, he stressed: “But it has to be open source accounting so that the public can see exactly how the money is being spent.”

Musk's stake in Tesla is approximately 170.5 million shares As of June 30th. Selling 10% of its shares would amount to about $21 billion, based on Tesla's current share price.

What do you think of Elon Musk's Twitter poll? Should he also use the sales proceeds to buy Bitcoin? Let us know in the comments section below.

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