Bitcoin “bull” Elon Musk – the South African entrepreneur behind billion-dollar companies such as SpaceX and Tesla – is now the richest man in the world, with a net worth of approximately $222 billion according to the New York Post.
Elon Musk Has the Most Money
Second is Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, who at the time of writing, only has a net worth of around $191 billion. Musk couldn’t help but rub the news in Bezos’ face after the Amazon head posted the following message on Twitter regarding overcoming adversity:
Listen and be open, but don’t let anybody tell you who you are. This was just one of the many stories telling us all the ways we were going to fail. Today, Amazon is one of the world’s most successful companies and has revolutionized two entirely different industries.
Following this message, Musk tweeted Bezos with a silver medal emoji, suggesting that he had fallen into a “runner up” position. At press time, Musk is worth about $30 billion more than Bezos, and much of that wealth has to do with a sudden expansion of SpaceX, which has recently grown by more than $100 billion, though a healthy portion of Musk’s wealth also has to do with the fact that he still owns a healthy majority of Tesla stock.
Surprisingly, very little of this wealth pertains to Musk’s bitcoin escapades, which have been up and down over the past year. Many believed that Musk was the ultimate crypto bull after he consistently praised BTC as the asset to own earlier in the year. Clearly, Musk believed this enough that his company Tesla purchased more than $1.5 billion in BTC and added the asset to its balance sheet.
Musk has also been very fond of Dogecoin, which is one of today’s primary bitcoin competitors after other leading assets such as Ethereum and Ripple’s XRP.
However, for all the praise and support he seems to give BTC, Musk has also done his fair share to bring the asset down. For example, not long after making such a big bitcoin purchase in early 2021, Musk commented that customers of Tesla would be given the opportunity to purchase electric vehicles with bitcoin. This got everyone excited, and traders believed the currency would boom to entirely new price levels, but the hype didn’t last.
Causing Bitcoin to Experience Dips
Just a few weeks later, Musk announced that he was rescinding this decision as he was worried about the hazards bitcoin and crypto mining presented to the environment. He stated that in supporting bitcoin payments, he was also promoting misused energy and growing carbon emissions, and thus, the idea of paying for a Tesla car died almost instantly.
The news caused panic in the industry and the price of bitcoin later experienced a heavy fall, though at press time, the asset has recovered and is trading for about $57,000.
Source: Read Full Article