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Elon Musk is no longer the richest person in the world after Tesla Inc shares fell 8.6% on Monday, wiping $ 15.2 billion from his net worth.
Tesla’s biggest drop since September was fueled in part by Musk’s comments over the weekend that the prices of Bitcoin and smaller rival Ether “look high.” His message, via his favorite Twitter outlet, came two weeks after Tesla announced that it added $ 1.5 billion in Bitcoin to its balance sheet.
Musk also tweeted early Monday that the Y model from the company’s standard SUV range would still be available “off the menu,” backing up reports from electric vehicle news site Electrek that the model had been removed from its online configurator.
Musk falls to second place on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index of the World’s 500 Richest People with a Net Worth of $ 183.4 billion, down from a peak of $ 210 billion in January.
Amazon.com Inc founder Jeff Bezos regained first place even as his fortune fell by $ 3.7 billion to $ 186.3 billion on Monday.
The two billionaires have been swapping places since January as the value of Tesla fluctuated. The shares rose as much as 25% from 2021 before wiping out almost all of this year’s earnings.
Musk briefly surpassed Bezos after his SpaceX rocket company raised $ 850 million earlier this month, valuing the company at $ 74 billion, a 60% increase from August.
Bezos held the top spot in the rankings for three straight years before January, when Musk eclipsed the e-commerce titan thanks to a 794% rally in Tesla shares.
The market sell-off on Monday affected many of the world’s ultra-rich. Zhong Shanshan, the richest person in Asia, ranked second in decline on the Bloomberg index, falling $ 5.1 billion while his bottled water company fell 4.5%.
Colin Huang of Pinduoduo Inc, Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Industries Ltd and Pony Ma of Tencent Holdings Ltd lost more than $ 2.5 billion each.
Read: Musk defends Tesla Bitcoin move, says token is less dumb than cash
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