San Francisco, Feb 12 (IANS): The younger brother of Elon Musk and a Tesla board member Kimbal Musk sold $25.6 million of shares in the electric carmaker.

According to a filing with the US Securities And Exchange Commission, the 48-year-old sold 30,000 shares on February 9, reports marketwatch.com.

Kimbal Musk's sales came at just above $850 per share, according to securities filings.

The sales left the younger Musk with nearly 600,000 Tesla shares, a stake worth about $483 million at Wednesday's closing price of $804.82.

On Wednesday, the stock TSLA, +0.85% dropped 5.3 per cent, with an intraday high of just $844.82. It rose 1 per cent in midday trading Thursday, but, at $812.41, it was still well below where Kimbal Musk sold his shares.

The last time Kimbal Musk sold shares of the electric-vehicle maker, he also exercised options to buy the same amount, just at a much lower price.

Kimbal Musk is the chief executive officer and co-founder of The Kitchen Restaurant Group.

The two brothers co-founded Zip2, which was later sold to Compaq, and Kimbal was an earlier investor in his brother's company X.com, which was later sold to PayPal.

Earlier, another director Antonio Gracias, sold more than 150,000 shares earlier this month, according to securities filings.

Meanwhile, Tesla has invested $1.5 billion in the Bitcoin cryptocurrency.

The announcement led to a surge in the price of one Bitcoin, which was hovering around $44,000,

Tesla said it will also "begin accepting bitcoin as a form of payment for our products in the near future."