[4eleven7]

One of these things is not like the other.

One is backed by multiple factories producing vehicles, with even more factories coming online in the next year, an entire industry facing "innovator's dilemma" with a petrol & diesels new sales ban coming into force 2030-2035 for most countries.

The other, a virtual commodity not backed by any physical items, issuers or a real economy.

How are they comparable?

[TheOtherHobbes]

They're comparable because the value is based on faith/hope in the future, not fundamentals.

The existence of factories is irrelevant if those factories are not spectacularly profitable.

And right now they're barely - not spectacularly - profitable. And the innovator's dilemma applies equally to the rest of the industry, which is already making EVs of its own.

Like everyone else I have no idea if Tesla is a reasonable bet. But it's clear the price today has become completely and irrationally detached from fundamentals to the point where the value might as well be from trading virtual items.

[est31]

Yeah a tulip bulb has some basic real value. You put it into the ground and it grows into a beautiful plant. But is it worth as much as a house in downtown Amsterdam? Certainly not. Tesla is a valuable company, but the current price is totally unjustified.

[zzbzq]

They are precisely like the each other because the investment is, in both cases, based on expectation of future value.

The people investing in Tesla are the same people who invested Bitcoin. Robinhood is leading all price movement

Tesla has factories, etc. Don't forget blockchain was also going to be useful someday.

Tesla has dubious growth potential for a number of reasons. Tesla, and Musk in general, specialize in appealing to the only remaining middle class with money, which is tech-y young adult males. You can only sell each one so many cars. It will eventually saturate its core market and growth will slow unless they can sell more stuff to the same people or the same stuff to different people.

This means that have to convince "different people"--who don't care about Nikolai Tesla or EVs--to stop driving SUVs and used Honda Accords.

Tesla dabbles in other applications of its battery tech but nobody has imagined an opportunity there as big as the automobile one.

This leaves the idea of finding new stuff to sell to Musk's core fanbase. But what do you sell to people with too much money and not enough needs? An investment vehicle. Tesla stock itself is the second product offering. I wouldn't be surprised if they've, in the backrooms, made arrangements with the shady foreign shops that helped pump bitcoin to $20k, knowing that nobody seems to investigate or prosecute fraud anymore. This would be consistent with Musk's pattern of drawing all his inspiration from whatever's cool on reddit.

[throw1234651234]

Bitcoin is supported by billions of dollars of servers burning electricity. Environmentalists aren't pleased, but there is infrastructure.