Tesla’ s CEO and owner Elon Musk set records last year for one of the fastest streaks of wealth accumulation in the world’ s history. The reversal is underway, and it’ s very steep and giving Elon sleepless nights. The Tesla Inc. chief executive officer lost around a whopping $27 billion since on Monday as shares of the top automaker tumbled in the selloff of tech stocks.
His estimated $156. 9 billion net worth still places him at only No. 2 on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, but he’ s now almost around $20 billion behind Jeff Bezos, who he topped just last week as world’ s top richest person.
Musk’ s tumble only shows the hard- to- fathom velocity of his ascent. Tesla shares soared around 743% in 2020, boosting the value of his entire stake and unlocking billions of dollars in options through his great ” moonshot” compensation package.
His gains accelerated into the start of the new year. In January, he unseated Bezos as the top world’ s richest person. Musk’ s fortune peaked later that month at around $210 billion, according to the index, a ranking of the world’ s top 500 wealthiest people.
Consistent quarterly profits, the election of President Joe Biden with his embrace of clean new technologies and enthusiasm from retail investors fueled Elon’ s company’ s rise, but for some, its swelling valuation was emblematic of a very unsustainable frothiness in technology. The Nasdaq 100 Index fell for the third straight week on this Friday, its longest streak of declines since early September.
Bitcoin Investment,I Musk’s fortune hasn’ t been solely subject to the great forces buffeting the famous tech industry. His net worth has risen and slumped recently in tandem with the price of the Bitcoin. Tesla disclosed last month it had added around a whopping $1. 5 billion of the cryptocurrency to its very own balance sheet. Musk’ s fortune took a $15 billion hit two weeks later after he mused on his twitter account that the prices of Bitcoin and other top cryptocurrencies ” do seem high.”
By Oscar Isoi
