SpaceX has moved 1,308 Bitcoin, value roughly $153 million, in its first onchain exercise in three years. The motion was flagged by Arkham Intelligence, which tracks wallets tied to the corporate.
The Bitcoin (BTC) was withdrawn from 16 Pay-to-Public-Key-Hash (P2PKH) addresses and consolidated right into a single SegWit-compatible Pay-to-Witness-Public-Key-Hash (P2WPKH) deal with, the place it remained at time of publication. The motion of BTC from 16 separate addresses into one might make it simpler to handle and presumably cheaper to spend the funds later.
Whereas the rationale for shifting the property is unclear, the character of the switch suggests a strategic adjustment reasonably than a reactive motion.
SpaceX is a non-public aerospace firm based by Elon Musk in 2002. The corporate first disclosed its BTC holdings in July 2021, alongside Tesla. The acquisition was a part of Musk’s broader technique to diversify his firms’ property and assist crypto adoption.
Neither SpaceX nor Musk has commented on the switch.
Contract tensions develop as Pentagon eyes SpaceX alternate options
SpaceX’s determination to consolidate its Bitcoin holdings comes as the corporate is navigating growing political uncertainty.
In early June, the administration of US President Donald Trump reportedly threatened to evaluate or cancel about $22 billion in SpaceX contracts amid a feud between the Trump and Musk on X. Although many of the contracts had been deemed “too vital to US pursuits to get rid of,” the episode signaled rising political pressure and raised questions on SpaceX’s long-term standing with the US authorities.
At the moment, the Pentagon introduced its determination to diversify its companions for the Golden Dome missile protection system, a $175 billion missile protection initiative to construct a space-based community of satellites to detect and monitor incoming threats.
Reported by Reuters, considerations over “over-reliance on SpaceX” have prompted the Trump administration to open bids to different suppliers, guaranteeing the Golden Dome isn’t solely depending on SpaceX.
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From memecoins to stablecoin rails
For the reason that 2021 Bitcoin bull run, Elon Musk’s relationship with crypto has been something however simple. His early tweets endorsing Dogecoin despatched the memecoin hovering, just for it to crash by 30% following his look on the TV sketch comedy present “Saturday Night time Dwell.”
That very same 12 months, Tesla introduced a $1.5 billion Bitcoin buy and briefly accepted BTC as cost. The choice was quickly reversed over environmental considerations, and a portion of the corporate’s holdings was bought off.
After buying Twitter in 2022 and rebranding it as X, Musk started laying the groundwork for a broader monetary ecosystem. X secured cash transmitter licenses throughout the US, and backend code revealed early growth of a local crypto pockets. Whereas no crypto options have been launched publicly, blockchain integration stays a part of the long-term imaginative and prescient.
In a 2024 podcast, enterprise capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya mentioned SpaceX makes use of stablecoins to gather Starlink funds in rising markets, bypassing conventional banking rails. “They don’t need to take care of sending wires… so that they swap into stablecoins,” he mentioned.
At the moment, SpaceX is estimated to maintain about 6,977 BTC, value roughly $815 million, positioning it quietly among the many largest company Bitcoin holders.
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