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How rich is Elon Musk? – His wealth in context with pixels and lots of scrolling

4 points| engagingdata | 4 years ago |engaging-data.com

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jppope|4 years ago

I wish they would do this same stuff for the US defense budget, the US Federal Budget, Total US Healthcare expenditure... basically anything useful. Elon just has a lot of stock in Telsa. It's fairy dust until he sells his stake...

engagingdata|4 years ago

not entirely sure why people need to point out that it's not cash. Most wealthy people don't stuff $100 bills in their mattress. They own stock and real estate.

Do people think Bill Gates doesn't have a lot of MSFT stock, or Warren Buffet doesn't own a lot of Berkshire stock?

GDC7|4 years ago

> Do people think Bill Gates doesn't have a lot of MSFT stock, or Warren Buffet doesn't own a lot of Berkshire stock?

Bill Gates is actually the richest man in the world proper because his net worth is so diversified that it still has an asterisk near to it due to illiquidity because we are talking about billions of dollars, but not nearly as much as Musk or Bezos.

Not to mention the fact that when Gates picks up the phone to reach the WH or the WHO or the health secretary of any country on Earth he'd be able to speak directly within 10 mins.

No amount of money can curate Musk reuputation as a quack and nobody wants to be seen or be on record talking with Bezos either.

With regards to net worth , although Musk is selling stock he still has lots of net worth tied to an Enron-esque type stock which has essentially only downside and it's more unstable than a Chernobyl nuclear reactor (and it's mostly due to Musk)

His plan is to use time windows where the stock is at the all time highs to offload equity to bigger fools and hype the stock with constant promotion

smoldesu|4 years ago

Bear in mind, this isn't "how rich" Elon is, eg. his liquid cash, but rather his net worth that takes assets/stock into consideration. I'm not particularly fond of the guy, but saying that he's worth more than 250 billion dollars seems like a bit of a stretch. He's got a cult-following and a never-ending hype cycle that greatly exacerbates the value of his stock and assets, which while technically valuable, doesn't really pan out in real life. I wouldn't be surprised if the dude is relatively cash-poor, considering the how the SEC breathes down his neck when he moves a muscle. If he tried unloading any of his ownership of his companies and/or stepped down from his leadership positions, his net worth would nosedive. People don't buy into Tesla or SpaceX for the value they present, they buy it because Elon will keep being Elon, and much like Steve Jobs before him, you can always count on the cool hipster to sell more status symbols.

engagingdata|4 years ago

He apparently sold $10 billion dollars worth of Tesla stock last month and didn't impact the price of the stock.