Elon Musk’s SpaceX, in an unexplained move, has shifted $257 million worth of BTC into two different wallets. This is the space firm’s second large-scale transfer in three months, sparking speculation that it may be preparing to sell off a portion of its BTC holdings to tackle the rising financial and political pressures.
Data by blockchain intelligence firm Nansen showed that a SpaceX-controlled wallet “1MDyM” wired $130 million worth of BTC to the address “bc1qj” on Tuesday, October 21. Another SpaceX wallet “1AXeF”, meanwhile, transferred $127 million in BTC to another address “bc1qq”.
For now, the moved tokens remain unsold, stacked inside the receiving wallets respectively. Neither Musk nor SpaceX has addressed the move.
The development comes after NASA recently announced that it was going to open the moon lander contracts to other space companies along with SpaceX. In a televised interview this week, NASA’s acting chief Sean Duffy said that while SpaceX has won a contract to build a human landing system (HLS), the progress has been slow.
Now that NASA plans to consider other space players for this sensitive mission, Lockheed Martin and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin will also be applying for partnership deals.
SpaceX, meanwhile, is likely to cover-up delays in the timeline of completing its fully reusable Starship lunar lander. Speculation is brewing that the company’s recent Bitcoin transfer could be a move to raise the extra capital required to cover these setbacks and accelerate the program.
In July this year, SpaceX had moved $152 million worth of BTC reportedly into a single SegWit-compatible Pay-to-Witness-Public-Key-Hash (P2WPKH) address. This was SpaceX’s first on-chain activity since 2022.
As per Arkham, SpaceX presently holds $649.91 million in BTC.