Bitcoin goes into ludicrous mode as it briefly flippens Tesla

Earlier this morning, Tesla Motors announced that it had allocated part of its balance sheet to Bitcoin. Not even two hours have passed, and the crypto asset’s market cap briefly exceeded that of the car manufacturer itself.

For a short time today, Bitcoin (BTC) held a market cap of $807,869,728,188 according to data from AssetDash, surpassing Tesla’s at $807,829,441,685. Bitcoin held the 7th spot on the list following the announcement, with both Tesla and BTC sitting comfortably above Facebook’s market cap, $765 billion at the time.

The major flippening occurred this morning as news broke Tesla had purchased an aggregate of $1.5 billion in Bitcoin, to be held as an investment and store of value for its excess cash. Following the announcement, the price of BTC surged to a new all-time high of more than $44,000 before retreating to $43,202. Tesla’s stock price rose by more than 2% as markets opened, and is $871.43 at the time of publication.

Bloomberg Intelligence strategist Mike McGlone recently predicted that this Tesla investment may be the catalyst needed to push Bitcoin's market cap past $1 trillion for the first time. The total cryptocurrency market capitalization hit this value early last month as the price of BTC, Ether (ETH), and many altcoins surged.