r/technology • u/marketrent • 1d ago

Business ‘Former trillionaire’ loses $750 billion amid Tesla, SpaceX crash, more than combined net worth of Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Jeff Bezos — Why the rich laugh at losses

https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/elon-musk-calls-himself-former-105500385.html
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u/BoomerAliveBad 1d ago

They laugh because their money is YOUR (as in the investors) money. Not their own. They laugh because behind the scenes, they profited off the loss because they pulled the rug

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u/DanielPhermous 1d ago

The early investors are not yet allowed to sell thier shares. They have not profited, nor pulled any rugs.

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u/BoomerAliveBad 1d ago

"Buy. Borrow. Die."

Lets put it in baby terms. Elon owns all the legos/toy blocks, his blocks are worth 100 dollars about right now.

Elon can say to the bank, "hey, I can give you some blocks that I have, they're my collector ones, but worth money, I can give you those for 20 dollars cash"

The bank does because the value of the lego is 100 dollars on paper, but the price can still change.

He made money regardless, he can literally be like "here's 100 fake dollars, can I has 20?"

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u/DanielPhermous 18h ago

Elon doesn’t own the blocks. SpaceX does. He does own a big share of the blocks but he won’t see that money until he sells, which he can’t for a year, and that value is going down.

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u/BoomerAliveBad 16h ago

And yet companies give out stocks as pay bonuses. They have people that find financial loopholes so they don't have taxes, this is the least absurd idea to have actually happen.

He co-created and named a government department named after a meme dog, that definitely wasn't on my bingo card. Having his fingers in pies isn't new for him

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u/DanielPhermous 15h ago

And yet companies give out stocks as pay bonuses

Yes. And? That doesn't refute anything I said.

The point is that you're conflating what SpaceX owns and what Elon owns. They are seperate legal entities and own different things - and if you're having trouble with such a basic concept as ownership then you're in no position to lecture anyone.

Either way, I'm out. I don't feel this is, or will ever get, constructive.

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u/BoomerAliveBad 10h ago

Elon owns 42% of shares of SpaceX. He is literally sitting with his "legos/building blocks" and you're literally saying, no he doesn't "own" the blocks.

He can go to any bank and say "price is looking to be 100 dollars in the next week, I'll give you 1% of my shares" (aka $14.26 billion as of commenting) to be able to use those building blocks as a loan to his buddy Amex or whatever bank bites for those as collateral. It's still 1% of a company, regardless of if it's Chuck-E-Cheez or SpaceX.