Okay hear me out. SpaceX. Not a very successful name as compared to NASA. Microsoft. Apple. Amazon or any Chinese space industries. Same goes for Tesla. There are way bigger car brands like Toyota or honda or Bugatti if we are going big. But think about it. Why arnt the owners of these brands the richest person. When they are clearly more successful and prominent… same goes with starlink. All of elons companies aren’t world wide. So how is he the richest. And plus. Him loosing billions of worth of stocks in a span of days dropping from 1T isn’t normal is it…
Are we being lied to?
He was involved in PayPal early on (after a merger iirc) so most of his money was from PayPal stocks. That might have changed over the last few years, but that’s how he was so rich before
Because PayPal is something that people actually use
Shareholders and shares don’t understand actual value. It’s like bitcoin in a way. A lot of it is moving but nothing is it is being actually used.
He’s the richest because the market runs on vibes and he does market manipulation.
I have said the same before. Sure he would be rich with the companies he started but richest??? he never should have even had enough money to aquire twitter.
He didn’t have enough money to acquire twitter. Instead he got loans from the worst people in the world to buy twitter.
There are families with way more money than musk, all over the world. These are groups of people who made their money a century or several more ago. They are long lived dynasties that have passed-on how to keep power and how to be quiet about it.
Musk is doing things that these people want done. Propping up his stock is the cheapest and least traceable way to do it. Nothing needs to be laundered, and he is essentially being paid with other people’s money.
Because someone hasn’t removed his head from his neck yet.
My personal dislike for Tesla/SpaceX aside, they do employ 6-digit numbers of workers and make impactful real-life products, so Musk’s companies themselves would be worth a metric fuckton of money (maybe comparable to Honda/Toyota?) no matter what. But they are also somewhat overvalued on top of their already high inherent worth
And on top of this, Musk has really large stakes in his companies… I don’t know the exact details, but I don’t think it’s common for a CEO to own 20% of their company outright. So these together made Musk the richest person
If I am being pedantic, technically the richest entities in the world are countries and their governments… Basically like your examples suggested. No private company in the world can spend as much as the world’s largest countries. So by extension, leaders of dictatorships are arguably “richer” because they essentially own their country. Case in point, the House of Saud has a total net worth of ~1.4T USD
Are we being lied to?
Yes, most netwoth over 500 million is effectively imaginary as the value generally comes from share holding in corporations and a good chunk of those are locked from selling until a bunch of business metrics are met.
The amount of money they actually have access to is far lower then the networth.
And importantly people who are wealthy don’t actually spend their own money. They take out credit secured by their assets, for example stocks and so on, and then spend what they want from that credit. As long as the line goes up or at least not far down they are good to go. That said, if their assets lose too much value too quickly they can end up absolutely ruined because the bank will call them on their asset. This was a real risk with the purchase of twitter by Musky Taint, he had a stake in Tesla and when the value of Tesla dropped he almost reached a point where he would have had to sell off stock for cash which would have dropped the value of the stock further, leading to a crash in the stock. The same applies to his other assets, SpaceX and so on, they are all a house of cards which hold the value of the others up.
On top of all of this much of the value of those companies is built from government grants, loans, and contracts. SpaceX has secured contracts which bolster the stock value because they are safe bets, even if no money has changed hands. Tesla had cheaper cars than they should have due to grants from federal and state programs for electric cars.
If you want an example of living off the government teat Musky Taint is a clear winner.
Woah
His companies always have been extremely overvalued because he always promises amazing things
That he then deliveres about 1% of what he promises, if anything at all, is mostly ignored because… I don’t know why. Point is, people believe his shit. He is a narcissist with psychopathic tendencies and a serial liar, bit investors don’t care so line goes up
The SpaceX IPO was hilariously ridiculous. They were saying that in a few years they’ll be launching Starships every few hours. Meanwhile they haven’t even delivered payload to orbit with them yet… (As they still don’t trust it enough I guess)
Anyone who knows anything at all about spaceflight could tell you that was both stupid and impossible, yet they just get away with it. It’s blatantly obvious lying to investors, but I’m sure they’ll make up some excuse or pretend they never said that by the time it’s 2030 and they’re not launching Starships every few hours
Starting of as the son of a family that own, I think it was emerald mines, didn’t hurt. Also getting a special position in the government where he used teenagers and a chain saw to eliminate the government agencies that regulate his businesses also didn’t hurt. Then promising big in a charismatic way and delivering small managed to get him a number of government contracts and grants and finally the most important characteristic need to become wealthy… lack of a moral compass. Guess he just got lucky.
His real wealth, the actual engine of it is paypal. Everything on top of that is money market manipulation.
I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have a stake in PayPal anymore.
And paypal is shit. No one uses it anymore.
I don’t disagree that paypal is shit, but saying “No one uses it anymore” is flat wrong.
PayPal processed 6.0 billion transactions at a 7% decline in Q1 2025. However, total payment value (TPV) was $417.2 billion with an increase of 3% compared to the previous year.
With a 45.52% market share and a massive 432 million active users, it remains the top choice for online payments, outpacing Stripe (17.15%) and Shopify Pay Installments (15.68%).
432 million is around 1 of 20 people on the planet.
He’s perfected, in part intentionally, in part just by being suited to the part, acting like many stupid people’s idea of a tech genius. Many of those stupid people have way too much money.
There also seems to be a large “if I hear it enough times it must be true” effect. I can’t spot any evidence for him being more than slightly above average intelligence, but I’ve heard even people who dislike him and his politics give lip service to the idea that he is really smart because that’s what is accepted by the mainstream.
Because tech stocks routinely go way higher than other stocks because they feel there’s a much larger chance of an announcement boosting it to a new high value. Ironically Tesla and spacex are so overvalued that a new high valuation is unlikely to match current stock ticker values. It’s easier to explain as high risk (tech companies for the most part) vs low risk gambling (Amazon, alibaba, pharmaceutical, banking, real estate). They’re all risky, but high risk high reward appeals more to people who have always been bailed out of poor decisions they’ve made.
Okay
Are we being lied to?
Yes and no. They are gamblers. People who own such figures always are, and their “values” are more or less made up.
True
To understand why, you have to first understand that the systems that brought him all that wealth are not meritocratic.
