Guinness World Record: How Did Elon Musk Lose $182 Billion in Just 15 Months?
(Photo : Photo by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)
After losing the "World's Richest Man" title, Elon Musk now holds the world record for the worst loss of fortune in history.

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has officially broken a Guinness World Record for the largest-ever loss of personal fortune. The publication said the tech mogul had lost $180 billion since November 2021.

Musk's cumulative losses greatly exceed the previous record of $58.6 billion, established by Japanese tech billionaire Masayoshi Son in 2000, according to Guinness World Records, even though the wealth is an estimated number.

How Did Elon Musk Lose Lots of Money?

In its blog, Guinness World Records noted: "Although the exact figure is almost impossible to ascertain, Musk's total losses far surpass the previous record of $58.6 billion, set by Japanese tech investor Masayoshi Son in 2000."

The dot-com meltdown destroyed Softbank, the firm of Masayoshi Son, whose net worth fell from $78 billion in February 2000 to $19.4 billion in July of the same year, according to Guinness World Record. The company was able to recover thanks to a series of acquisitions of IT firms in the United States and Britain, per Mint.

Bernard Arnault (France), the founder of luxury goods company LVMH (Louis Vuitton Mot Hennessy), is projected to be worth $190 billion, surpassing Elon Musk net worth. Despite Elon Musk net worth dropping more than any other person, he still ranks as the second wealthiest individual on the planet.

As a result of the poor performance of Tesla stocks, Elon Musk net worth fell from a high of $320 billion in 2021 to $138 billion as of January 2023, as reported by Forbes.

Shares of Tesla, of which Musk is the CEO and biggest shareholder, dropped by 65%, per Forbes.

After Musk announced his $44 billion takeover of Twitter in April, Forbes said the stock price dropped by about 20 percent.

To help pay for the purchase of the social media firm, Musk unloaded $7 billion in Tesla shares in August and another $4 billion in November. Since April, he has sold almost $23 billion worth of shares, including $3.58 billion last month, The Hill reported.

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Elon Musk Believes 'Unhinged' Conspiracy Theory

In another related news, Elon Musk concurred with a journalist's assertion on Monday that Russiagate, the slur given to the idea and extensive probe into whether Donald Trump and Russia conspired to rig the 2016 election, was one of the most ridiculous and "unhinged conspiracy theories" in recent times," per Fox News.

Glenn Greenwald, writer and co-founder of The Intercept, responded to an article by Tim Starks in the Washington Post titled "Russian trolls on Twitter had little influence on 2016 voters."

According to Greenwald, the great majority of media corporations,' scholars,' think tank frauds, and NYT/'disinformation NBC's divisions all contributed to the spread of the Russiagate conspiracy theory. In reaction to Greenwald's tweet, Elon Musk typed the word "true."

The Washington Post's story centered on research that revealed Russian influencers in the 2016 election only reached a small number of people on Twitter, and those who they did contact were probably partisan Republicans predisposed to support Donald Trump.

The notion that Trump conspired with Russia to hijack the 2016 presidential election was relentlessly promoted by major media sources during his administration. His first term was mostly consumed with the Robert Mueller probe, which was constantly pushed forward by liberal media.

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