By Dominic Thomas-
Crashing cryptocurrency prices have cost tech giants Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos billions of dollars.
The news follows more than $1 trillion worth of crypto market value has been lost amid fears that cryptocurrency will be banned in certain countries and heavily regulated in others.
Tech stocks have also performed poorly, with the stock market suffering its worst week since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Netflix had to endure the steepest drop on share price for a decade, while high tech exercise equipment company Peloton’s stock dropped below its IPO price, meaning Peloton shares are worth less now than they were when they were first offered on the stock market.
Per the Independent, Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Amazon mogul Jeff Bezos have seen their personal fortunes tumble significantly due to the crypto crash, although they are so rich that it doesn’t seem likely to be ruinous for their finances.
Musk has lost $25.1 billion due to the drop in crypto values and tech stocks, while Bezos is down by around $20 billion.
For most people this would be more money than they could ever dream of, let alone lose, but if there’s any two people on the planet who could lose more than $20 billion and not be badly affected it’s Musk and Bezos.
Musk’s personal net worth of $243.4 billion makes him the richest person in the world, while Bezos is in second place with a fortune totalling $167.6 billion.
Other tech giants have also seen large sums of money disappear, with Changpeng Zhao of Binance losing $17.7 billion and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg $10.4 billion down.
Crashing crypto values are continuing to crash over both the long-term and short-term periods, with flagship cryptocurrency Bitcoin falling 16.8% over the past week and second-largest cryptocurrency Ethereum down by 25%.
According to Forbes, the crypto market could crash to new lows as analysts warn that the price of Bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies could keep falling further as confidence in the market drops.
Analysts are worried that the cryptocurrency market is a speculative bubble which could burst when people realize the value of cryptocurrency depends on other people expecting the prices to keep going up.
Huge fluctuations in the value of cryptocurrency are prompting warnings of ‘financial mania’ that could result in a crash and take trillions of dollars worth of investments with it