Apple CEO Tim Cook reveals three-year crypto holdings

The CEO of Apple, Tim Cook, told DealBook’s Sorkin that he had been holding Bitcoin for about three years. The CEO, however, explained that his interest and research in Bitcoin was personal and that Apple had no plans to join the crypto bandwagon in the near future.

The Apple executive said it was ‘reasonable’ to own Bitcoin as part of a diversified portfolio. However, he clarified that he was not giving investment advice, only sharing personal sentiments. According to Binance, Bitcoin almost touched the 82K mark after recording a high of $81,846.71.

Tim Cook thinks Bitcoin is ‘interesting,’ but Apple won’t touch it anytime soon

Tim Cook of Apple reveals that he has personally invested in cryptocurrency. “I think it’s reasonable to own it as part of a diversified portfolio,” he said at the #DealBook Online Summit. https://t.co/xpahdlKfOe pic.twitter.com/CQpQgShu0x

— DealBook (@dealbook) November 9, 2021

The Apple Inc. CEO was explicit in his ‘personal engagement and investment’ in Bitcoin but did not disclose his stake. He insisted that crypto was something that Apple was looking at but in no hurry to actually get into it as part of its core business. Other companies like Tesla were already accepting Bitcoin payments for their EVs and had bought $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin to hold in its corporate treasury, according to the New York Times.

Tim Cook added that the tech giant had no plans to integrate crypto into its payment system in the near future. The CEO mentioned that Apple was already looking into other things but cryptically refused to divulge any details.

The Apple exec said he wouldn’t invest the company’s money (~$200 Billion in cash) in Bitcoin, not because he wouldn’t invest his own money, but because investors didn’t buy Apple stocks to get any sort of crypto benefit. He, however, pointed out that shareholders were free to invest directly in crypto through their own means. Apple allowed its users to download crypto wallet apps through the App Store.

“I don’t think people buy Apple stock to get exposure to crypto.”

–Tim Cook

The CEO did not think he was a ‘crypto bull,’ or whether he deserved any Bitcoin-related labels for that matter, but added that NFTs were also interesting. 

Bitcoin whales move large amounts of BTC amid rally

According to sentiment data, the last Bitcoin whale transactions >100K and >1M were recorded on October 11th, when Bitcoin stood at $62K. On that day alone, sentiment recorded 5,032 transactions worth over 100K and 1,057 transactions worth over 1M. However, the founder of Bitgrow Lab, Vivek Sen, revealed through an X post that whales were buying Bitcoin ‘like never before’ since Trump’s re-election. 

According to Arkham’s on-chain analytics, an investor bought $92 million worth of Bitcoin on November 7th, while four whales bought Bitcoin worth over $145 million on November 8th. On September 14th, another Bitcoin whale bought 1,064 BTC worth $64 million. The most recent whale Bitcoin transfer was recorded six days ago, where two separate transactions of 32.37K BTC and 30.37K BTC worth over $2 billion each were used to move BTC from Mt. Gox to an unknown wallet.

The data also showed that another unknown wallet acquired over 20K BTC worth over $1.4 billion in two separate transactions only two days ago. Arkham also flagged two more transfers of over 10K BTC and 9K BTC worth over $700 million each to two different wallets two days ago. 

In total, Arkham recorded 144 instances in the last 7 days where BTC worth over $100 million was transacted.