Elon Musk becomes the first person to reach a net worth of $400B | Hacker News Reader

Elon Musk becomes the first person to reach a net worth of $400B

cnn.com

5 pointsmadihaa9 comments

A fundamental indication of what's wrong with society. Human beings cannot handle scale. Economies of scale and technology turns into perversion and gives individuals at the top too much power.

There is a case where the pay package he was granted in 2018 was rejected that is worth $100B in total Tesla's trading value.

I assume that was not included. And if the case would be turned down later, would that put him as first person to hit Half a Trillion Net worth?

I still remember in 2013 / 2014 we thought trillion dollar market cap were impossible due to law of big numbers. And even though my model project Apple to be the a Trillion Dollar market cap company I didn't even believe it myself. We now have multiple multi-trillion market cap company.

I wonder how long will we see the first Trillionaire.

In terms of numbers, there have been a lot of trillionaires in Zimbabwe when their currency ran away with hyperinflation. Inflation has been happening with USD as well. So, we will see trillionaires eventually - just question of time.

Now, recalculate the dollar amount into electricity kWh that this money can buy. Talk about energy budget that this person possesses/can direct and manage as result. How many billions of kWh are they worth?

I like the Zimbabwe concept. But Elon seems to have really benefitted from the US election, which I’ve heard was about the price of eggs. At $3.64/dozen, Elon is only worth 151b eggs. He could only afford to buy 18 years worth of America’s egg exposure.

> I still remember in 2013 / 2014 we thought trillion dollar market cap were impossible due to law of big numbers.

The way the money supply, inflation, and economic growth work, trillion dollar caps/worth are pretty much inevitable unless a revaluation of the currency (the opposite of a devaluation) takes place.

Tesla fundamentals a mediocre, and are very unlikely to change by the next earnings call. Tesla is now the biggest meme stock in history.

TBF the guy in second place sells overpriced handbags and liquor.

Here’s a basic question I have:

So he’s only worth that much on paper. He’d have to sell everything to get a big pile is cash.

Would there be enough money sloshing around to buy all his shares and assets at the indicated value?

I guess there is, but surely he wouldn’t get that much if he had a fire sale? LOL

What about all the billionaires combined?

Bezos, Musk and so on.

Could they just sell everything?

Do other people have enough money to buy what they have?

I suppose they do if you extend the net wide enough…

Just seems crazy to me and meaningless.

It’s madness :-/

What are they hoarding it all for?

I just dont understand it at all.

No, it's not actually possible to liquidate that much. But it doesn't really matter. It's so much money that the exact amount doesn't really matter. It's just an estimate. The estimate is high, but since that "fire sale" will never actually occur, it's all just numbers.

As for what they're all hoarding it for... well, Musk at least is really good at spending money on things that make him happy. He now runs the world's most important forum and has a ton of control over who gets to say what and who gets heard. He just bought the Presidency -- by means that were arguably illegal, but since the President controls the Justice Department, it doesn't matter. He wants to own Mars, and he's spent billions to do it.

Bezos seems less good at it. He did buy a newspaper and swung it in a way that helped buy him the election, too. He's also got a rocket company, though he's not as good at it. In general he seems to be trying to just make the number go up, more than he wants to do anything with it.

Bill Gates is throwing his money at a variety of charitable causes, with mixed success. A lot of it is comparatively un-sexy stuff, like getting people vaccinated, but its relieving a lot of suffering.

Good questions !

In a sense, the whole world is leveraged now. We can monetize everything. If you want to understand a bit about finance Matt Levine newsletter is excellent.

He talked about how a singer can be a billionaire in today's world. Just calculate the present value of his future expected revenues, and sell a portion of it. A company of 1.

Re your question - if Musk or Bezos decided to liquidate their holdings, both stocks would crash, but probably not in the same proportion.

Amazon is a very established business with big, consistent profit and while it's valuation is high, it's not outrageous. Tesla on the other hand, has 99% of it's valuation derived from future promises and Musk's personality. If he was to sell a significant part, the stock would crater 90% (and mind you, if it craters 90% it would still be worth more than Ford and GM combined !).

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