Elon Musk loses $34b while Jeff Bezos loses $27b in horror week for billionaires

The world’s richest man is now $34 billion poorer and other billionaires have also taken a huge hit to their personal wealth in recent days.

Billionaires have taken a hit in recent days after stocks plummeted off the back of news that the US Federal Reserve was planning to hike up interest rates.

The country’s central bank is expected to rise interest rates by a quarter of a per cent in March to stop rampant inflation. They are expected to confirm the news soon.

It caused the biggest fall in the stock market since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic back in March 2020.

Nowhere was this more evident than in the hip pocket of tech entrepreneur Elon Musk.

Although Mr Musk is still the richest man in the world, his fortunes tanked after a horror week on the stock markets for Tesla.

A whopping US$25 billion (A$34b) was wiped from his personal net worth in just seven days, representing an overall drop of more than nine per cent.

Other rich-listers were also feeling the crunch of the stock markets.

Analysis by Bloomberg found that the top five tech billionaires collectively lost US$67 billion (A$93b) over the past seven days.

Elon Musk has shed $25 billion from his net worth over the last seven days. Picture: Brendan Smialowski / AFP

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has lost $20 billion (A$27b) in the past week, just slightly less than Musk’s $25 billion.

Meanwhile, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg lost $10.4 billion (A$14.4b), Google’s Larry Page saw $7.6 billion (A$10.5b) wiped from his personal finances and Microsoft boss Bill Gates dropped $4.3 billion (A$6b).

Cryptocurrency hasn’t been spared from the massive blow to the market either.

Despite being meant to stay immune to the woes of traditional investment like inflation, crypto investors are spooked after seeing the traditional stock market fall.

It sparked a panicked mass sell-off which saw a whopping US$1.4 trillion (A$1.9t) wiped off the market in just two months since its $3 trillion combined market cap last November.

Changpeng Zhao, the boss of cryptocurrency token Binance, saw his wealth drop by US$17.7 billion over the past few days.

Jeff Bezos copped the second largest hit, behind Elon Musk. Picture: Emma McIntyre/Getty Images

Tesla stock over the past five days. Source: NASDAQ

Despite this blip in his fortunes, Mr Musk is still very much dominating the global rich list.

At his peak, in early November last year, Mr Musk’s vast wealth was worth an estimated US$306.4 billion (A$423b)— the first person in the history of the world to cross over the $300 billion mark.

The most updated version of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index puts him with an estimated wealth of US$243 billion (A$338b)— a loss of US$63 billion.

However, that’s still miles ahead of the second richest person, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, sitting on US$168 billion.

This isn’t the first time Mr Musk’s fortune has been pummelled in recent months.

At his peak, Tesla CEO Elon Musk had a net worth of US$306.4 billion. Picture: Frederic J. Brown / AFP

He previously lost $50 billion in personal wealth over two days after a risky tweet attracted negative attention.

The price of Tesla stock dropped three per cent on November 10, a drop of US$199 billion, over fears Musk would sell 10 per cent of his own stock. selling 10 per cent of his substantial holdings.

In a Twitter poll, the Tesla CEO asked his 62.6 million followers whether he should sell 10 per cent of his shares and people were worried about whether he would actually do it.

Mr Musk is so rich that he had to fork our US$15 billion in taxes last year.

A report also found that just two per cent of his fortune could end world hunger for a year.