Elon Musk’s fortune has “evaporated” more than $ 20 billion since appearing on the comedy show Sarturday Night Live

The Tesla CEO’s fortune has dropped by more than $20 billion since his controversial appearance on “Saturday Night Live” last weekend, according to recent Forbes statistics.

Tesla shares are estimated to have fallen 15% this week. That caused Elon Musk’s fortune to be blown by $ 20.5 billion, down to $ 145.5 billion by the time the market closed May 13 (US time). Despite this, Musk is still the third-richest person in the world, behind Jeff Bezos ($183.9 billion) and Bernard Arnault and his family ($179.4 billion).

Before participating in “Saturday Night Live”, the Tesla boss owned a fortune of $ 166 billion and was the richest person to ever participate in this program. Here, Musk spoke out in favor of digital currencies, especially Dogecoin. However, shortly after that, at one point, the price of this cryptocurrency fell by nearly 30%, down to 0.49 USD / dong.

And yesterday (May 13), Musk had a “flip” phase when he announced that Tesla would suspend the program to accept Bitcoin payments when customers buy their cars.

The reason the 49-year-old billionaire raised concerns about the growing use of fossil fuels to mine and trade Bitcoin. Musk said that Tesla still holds Bitcoin and will only trade when mining and trading this digital currency uses a more sustainable energy.

Just after the above announcement, the Bitcoin price dropped by 17%, to less than $50,000/dong. Wall Street analysts say Musk’s latest moves are confusing crypto investors and causing volatility in Tesla’s share price, which has been struggling for the past month.

With many investors worried about rising inflation, shares of Big Tech companies and electric car companies like Tesla have led the recent sell-off.

Prior to that, Tesla stock had been hit by somewhat unfavorable business in China. Accounting for 30% of Tesla’s total global sales, this is the company’s second largest market, after the US.

On March 11, Tesla announced it was suspending plans to buy land and expand its factory in Shanghai. The reason for this is “uncertainty in US-China relations”. According to some sources, with a 25% tax on electric vehicles imported from China and taxes still in place from the time of former President Trump, Musk’s company is intending to limit the share of production in the country. billion people country.

In addition, although China is a large and potential market, Tesla is facing increasingly fierce competition in the country, when domestic companies like Nio are developing strongly. According to Forbes, Tesla’s April sales fell 27% from the previous month.

While Tesla’s 15% drop this week has wiped out tens of billions of dollars from Musk, he is generally “fine” as he is nearly $110 billion richer than in 2020.