Elon Musk Loses $27 Billion as Tesla's Shares Tumble

American billionaire Elon Musk has lost $27 billion since last Monday, after Tesla's shares tumbled in the selloff of tech stocks.

The meltdown began on February 16, when shares of Tesla fell 2.4%, wiping $4.6 billion from CEO Musk’s fortune, pushing him down in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Musk's landing ended his nearly six-week period as the world's richest man.

In 2020, Musk's fortune more than quadrupled, as he became the world's richest person in January of that year. Tesla shares soared 743%, boosting the value of his stake and unlocking billions of dollars in options through his moonshot compensation package.

[caption id="attachment_219571" align="aligncenter" width="874"] Bloomberg Billionaires Index[/caption]

His net worth has increased and decreased recently along with the bitcoin price.Tesla revealed last month that it added $1.5 billion of cryptocurrency to its balance sheet. Musk's fortune earned $15 billion two weeks after he wrote on Twitter that the prices of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies "do seem high."

After the big fall in his company's shares to nearly $6.2 billion as of last Wednesday, Musk fell further to third place in the Forbes ranking of billionaires, standing $20 billion behind Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos.

Bezos, who held the title for more than three years until January 2020, regained his first place with a net worth of $177 billion.