Elon Musk: US 'past peak inflation' after Tesla sells 90% of Bitcoin

cointelegraph.com:

Bitcoin (BTC) is in short supply at Tesla, even as its CEO predicts that United States inflation has already peaked.

Speaking at Tesla’s 2022 Annual Meeting of Stockholders on Aug. 5, Elon Musk predicted that an upcoming United States recession would only be “mild to moderate.”

After recently selling almost all of its $1.5 billion BTC holdings, Tesla is seeing the emergence of exactly the kind of economic landscape in which risk assets thrive.

During a Q&A session at the Annual Meeting, Musk revealed that six-month commodities pricing for Tesla parts is already getting cheaper, not more expensive.

Commodities, he said, are trending down, providing a hint that inflation has already hit its highest levels.

“We sort of have some insight into where prices are headed over time and the interesting thing that we’re seeing now is that most of our commodities, most of the things that go into a Tesla — not all, more than half — the prices are trending down in six months,” he said.

The recovery from an inflationary period with commodities heading downhill provides fertile ground for a recovery in risk assets, including crypto. Theoretically, this comes as a result of lower inflation meaning less tightening by the Federal Reserve, providing favorable conditions for risk-on investments.

Should strength return to markets and crypto outperforms, the trend will be an ironic one for Tesla, which divested itself of practically all its BTC exposure — at a profit of just $64 million — last month.

At the time, Musk added that BTC could return to the firm’s balance sheet at a later date, and that the decision was not a commentary on Bitcoin per se.

The Annual Meeting, meanwhile, produced further optimistic predictions on macro, including a