Bitcoin's price today topped out at just over $47,000, a new all-time high for the world's largest cryptocurrency. Its market cap is currently at around $855 million-about $40 million more than the value of all shares in Tesla. Speaking of Tesla, the electric car maker played an outsized role in producing today's Bitcoin price surge. In early morning US trading, Bitcoin was selling for around $39,000, about $3,000 below its previous all-time high. Then came the news that Tesla had bought $1.5 billion in Bitcoin. Within an hour, the price had moved $4,000, according to data from CoinMarketCap. After plateauing for a few hours, it continued upward, hitting never-before-seen barriers of $44,000, $45,000, $46,000, and (briefly) $47,000. That means that Tesla's holdings in BTC increased by several hundred million in under 24 hours-not a bad return. It also means that a price point near $50,000-seemingly implausible a few months ago-is within reach. Tesla isn't the first company to put Bitcoin on its books. MicroStrategy, a business intelligence firm led by BTC proselytizer Michael Saylor, has spent $1.15 billion to buy Bitcoin, even selling securitized debt to purchase more of the digital asset. As of today, its 71,079 BTC are worth about $3.2 billion.