It's the largest two-day drop in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index's history.
Elon Musk, the chief executive officer of Tesla, has just lost $50 billion this week after the company's stock nosedived 16% in two days.
The massive losses follow a series of headlines, including comments on Twitter by Musk himself and another from a well-known short-seller.
It all began when Musk asked his Twitter followers if he should sell 10% of his company's stock over the weekend, followed by reports that his brother Kimbal had sold shares just before the poll.
In a recent Musk poll, more than 3.5 million people answered yes on the Twitter poll, with nearly 58% saying he should sell the stock. Musk later stated, he was willing to accept "either scenario."
Topping it off, an Insider article Tuesday morning said Musk may want to sell shares to cover personal obligations, citing Michael Burry, the investor made famous by the movie "The Big Short."
Musk is now worth $323 billion, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index shows, notwithstanding the losses. It's also the biggest one-day loss since Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' $US36 billion drop following his divorce from MacKenzie Scott in 2019.
Despite this week's dramatic drop, Tesla shares are still up 40% year to date -- and Musk remains the richest man on the planet, leading second-wealthiest man Jeff Bezos by $122 billion, the Index shows.
Widely known as the person who anticipated America's 2008 housing catastrophe, Burry believes Musk may be in a bind because to tax-free cash he obtained early this year in the form of personal loans.
Musk overtook Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos for the title for the first time in January, and the gap between the two billionaires has since widened to $143 billion, an amount bigger than Bill Gates' net worth, the world's fourth-richest person.
Cathie Wood's ARK Investment Management lost more than $750 million in Tuesday's selloff, while Oracle Corp. founder Larry Ellison, the company's second-largest individual shareholder, lost $2.1 billion.
Meanwhile, Tesla's market value has remained above $1 trillion, a level it reached last month when its third-quarter results exceeded market forecasts and rental-car business Hertz Global Holdings Inc. placed an order for 100,000 Tesla vehicles.
