Elon Musk loses $15 billion in a day after Bitcoin warning

Elon Musk is now not the world’s richest particular person after Tesla Inc. shares slid 8.6% in the present day, wiping $15.2 billion from his web price.

Tesla’s decline was fueled partly by Musk’s feedback over the weekend that the costs of Bitcoin and smaller rival Ether “do appear excessive.” His message — through his favored medium of Twitter — got here two weeks after Tesla introduced it has added $1.5 billion in Bitcoin to its steadiness sheet.

Musk additionally tweeted earlier in the present day that the corporate’s Mannequin Y Commonplace Vary SUV would nonetheless be out there “off the menu,” backing up experiences from electrical car information website Electrek that the mannequin had been faraway from its on-line configurator.

Musk drops to second on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index of the world’s 500 richest folks with a web price of $183.4 billion. Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos reclaimed the highest spot at the same time as his fortune fell by $3.7 billion to $186.3 billion.

The 2 billionaires have been swapping locations this 12 months as the worth of Tesla fluctuated. Musk briefly overtook Bezos after his rocket firm SpaceX raised $850 million earlier this month, valuing the corporate at $74 billion, a 60% bounce from August.

Bezos occupied the highest spot on the rating for 3 straight years previous to January, when Musk eclipsed the e-commerce titan due to a 794% rally in Tesla shares.