Mere moments ago, Tesla CEO Elon Musk was the richest person in the world. Following his rise up the list, Tesla invested $1.5 billion into the cryptocurrency Bitcoin with the company teasing that they’d soon be selling cars using the currency. But now a single tweet from the often controversial CEO has lost him $15.2 billion.
An email saying you have gold is not the same as having gold. You might as well have crypto.
Money is just data that allows us to avoid the inconvenience of barter.
That data, like all data, is subject to latency & error. The system will evolve to that which minimizes both.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 20, 2021
He then seals his fate with another tweet.
That said, BTC & ETH do seem high lol
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 20, 2021
Following these tweets, Tesla [TSLA] stock fell by 20% since its extremely high January valuation with it currently sitting at $682.22 at the time of writing, and with this Elon Musk has called to the second richest person in the world with a worth of $183 billion. Jeff Bezos once again sits at the top with a worth of $186 billion.
Peter Schiff, well-known economist, tweeted about the sudden fall in worth, calling Musk’s recent behaviour as “not an example other CEOs will likely follow!”:
Two weeks after @elonmusk announced that he spent $1.5 billion of shareholder money buying Bitcoin, #Tesla stock entered a bear market, plunging 20% from its all-time high set on Jan. 25th, and 16% since disclosing the #Bitcoin buy. Not an example other CEOs will likely follow!
— Peter Schiff (@PeterSchiff) February 22, 2021
