Elon Musk has set a world record
According to a Guinness World Records article, the Tesla and Twitter CEO broke the record after Tesla's shares plummeted, and the actual amount of money lost is "nearly hard to quantify."
Elon Musk, while having no personal purpose of attaining this, has just set a Guinness World Record for the biggest loss of personal wealth in the history of capitalism.
According to Forbes, Musk's net worth has dropped from a peak of $320 billion (in 2021) to $138 billion (in January 2023), owing primarily to Tesla stock's bad listing.
According to Forbes, Musk, the CEO of Twitter and Tesla, will lose the title of the richest man in the world to Bernard Arnault in December 2021, since he will have lost around 172 billion dollars of personal wealth. Furthermore, some other sources suggest that the loss could be closer to $192 billion.
According to the Guinness Book of Records, the exact sum of Musk's losses is "nearly impossible to determine," but it is undeniable that his losses "far exceed" the previous infamous loss record of 58.6 billion dollars set in 2000 by Japanese technology investor Masayoshi Son.
Musk slid to second place on the list of the world's richest persons at the end of last year, surpassed by Bernard Arnault, president, and CEO of LVMH Mot Hennessy Louis Vuitton.
According to Forbes, Arnault's fortune is valued at $203.7 billion, while Musk's fortune is valued at $146.5 billion. Until then, Musk was the world's richest man, having surpassed Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, in September 2021.
The value of Tesla shares has more than halved in 2022, owing in part to the sell-off that escalated following Musk's manipulations during the $44 billion purchase of Twitter, during which Musk sold $4 billion in Tesla shares.
In this light, the news of much lower selling prices of Tesla models, which have been dropped to that level, is far more logical, thus there have been endearingly bizarre circumstances when old Teslas are offered at greater costs than new ones.
According to Forbes, Elon Musk's current net worth is "much more variable and erratic" than it has been in past years on average.
"That's because the majority of billionaires' wealth is usually in the form of stocks and investments. As the market valuation of these investments varies, so does the apparent wealth of their owner," the report says, but adds:
"Given that Elon Musk continues to build his own technology conglomerate with such large investments, it will not be surprising if such oscillatory investments in the near future, they will still pay off, so he can quickly return to the positions from which he currently fell".
In that situation, it would not be surprising if Musk set a new Guinness World Record, this time in the opposite direction: the highest single gain in personal income in history.
Post by Bryan C.
