BEIJING, Dec. 30 — For most of the world’s richest people, 2022 was an unforgettable year. That year, the 500 billionaires on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index lost nearly $1.4 trillion (9.75 trillion yuan) in net worth. Elon Musk, the new boss of Twitter, lost $138 billion ($961 billion) from his personal fortune on Jan. 1 of this year and lost his position as the world’s richest person.
The world’s richest people lose nearly 10 trillion yuan a year
The tech billionaires are bearing the brunt. In most cases, the higher the rise, the worse the fall. The cumulative net worth of Elon Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos (Jeff Bezos), Binance founder Zhao Changpeng and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has evaporated by 392 billion US dollars (about 2.7 billion US dollars). trillion yuan).
The following are the main points of decline in the fortunes of tech billionaires:
January: wake up call
Elon Musk alone lost 961 billion yuan
Elon Musk, then the world’s richest man, lost $25.8 billion after Tesla Inc. warned of supply challenges on Jan. 27. It was the fourth-largest one-day drop in the history of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, heralding a bumpy year for Elon Musk, both personally and financially.
April: Elon Musk buys Twitter
Acquisition of Twitter drags Elon Musk down
Shortly after disclosing his 9.1% stake in Twitter, Elon Musk offered to buy the company outright on April 14 at a valuation of $44 billion. Even for him, the price was too high. To fund the deal, he originally planned to borrow billions of dollars, leverage his larger Tesla stock holdings and come up with $21 billion in cash. Analysts accurately predicted that this would require a sell-off of Tesla stock. As a result, the stock market deteriorated in the coming months, and Elon Musk attempted to engineer an escape route, engaging in a months-long legal battle with Twitter. By the time the deal closed in October, Elon Elon Musk’s net worth was $39 billion less than when he made his original bid.
September: Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse transition falters
Even in a tough year for the U.S. tech giant, Mark Zuckerberg’s losses stand out. As of mid-September, his net worth had plummeted by $71 billion, or 57%, since Jan. 1, as his costly pivot to the Metaverse and an industry-wide downturn weighed on shares of Facebook parent Meta. . Over the course of the year, he will drop 19 spots on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and end 2022 at No. 25, his lowest position since 2014.
November: FTX Thunderstorm
Bankman-Fried’s cryptocurrency exchange FTX collapsed as a liquidity crisis exposed huge holes in his empire’s balance sheet and a lack of risk controls. At 30, he amassed a $16 billion fortune that was wiped out in less than a week. At his peak, he had a net worth of $26 billion.
December: Elon Musk loses the world’s richest man
Elon Musk is surpassed by Arnault
Elon Musk’s throne as the world’s richest man was replaced by Arnault, chairman of Louis Vuitton. While Arnault wasn’t immune to a tough 2022, with losses of roughly $16 billion for the year, that pales in comparison to Elon Musk’s losses of more than $138 billion.
How did Elon Musk get to this point? In the midst of a market downturn and an impulsive purchase of an unprofitable and vulnerable social media company, and with massive leverage, more supply chain issues and an insatiable hunger for attention, money comes easy, It goes fast too.
