2022 was an unforgettable year for the vast majority of the world’s richest people. The 500 billionaires listed on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index lost nearly $1.4 trillion in net worth in this year. Elon Musk, the new boss of Twitter, he lost $138 billion in personal wealth from January 1 of this year and lost the world’s richest man.
The tech billionaires have borne the brunt of the fall. In most cases, the more they go up, the worse they go down. The cumulative net worth of the four – Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos (Jeff Bezos), Cryptocurrency founder Zhao Changpeng and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (Mark Zuckerberg) – evaporated by $392 billion (about $2.7 trillion).
Musk was still the richest man in the world. He lost $25.8 billion after Tesla Inc. issued a supply challenge warning on Jan. 27. It was the fourth-largest one-day drop in the history of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, signaling a rocky year for Musk both personally and financially.
Musk offered to buy the company outright at a valuation of $44 billion. Even for him, that price was too high. He used more of his Tesla stock and put up $21 billion in cash to finance the deal.
Zuckerberg’s losses also stand out in a tough year for the U.S. tech giant. His net worth had plunged $71 billion since Jan. 1 this year. The reason was his costly shift to the meta-universe and an industry-wide slump that dragged down the stock price of Facebook parent Meta.
Bankman-Fried’s (Bankman-Fried) cryptocurrency exchange FTX collapsed after a liquidity crisis exposed huge holes in his empire’s balance sheet and a lack of risk controls. The 30-year-old had amassed a fortune of $16 billion, which went up in smoke in less than a week. His net worth reached $26 billion at the peak time.
How did Musk get to this point? He impulsively purchased an unprofitable social media company in the midst of a market downturn. The money comes easy and goes fast.