SpaceX IPO makes Elon Musk the first trillionaire(reuters.com)
reuters.com
SpaceX IPO makes Elon Musk the first trillionaire
https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/spacex-ipo-makes-elon-musk-worlds-first-trillionaire-2026-06-11/
7 comments
We agreed to its value, and it can be spent and in your limited life span it translates to a drastically different life experience. So, fake money is still money. Not making any judgements on the topic, but waving this truth away doesn’t work.
He can't spend this trillion. It's not real.
It's the notional value of multiplying the last sale price times the number of shares he has. He can't spend the money until he sells the shares, and there's no reason to think that they would actually all sell for the last selling price.
In fact, Musk is restricted from selling shares at the moment. His bank balance is the same today as it was yesterday.
(Caveat: he can borrow money today, using the shares as collateral. When the debt comes due, he can sell shares to sell it. So if he wanted additional spending money today, he could have it. Probably not up to the full trillion dollars, but some absurdly large sum.)
(Caveat bonus: he can actually roll over that borrowing indefinitely -- borrow more money to pay back the last one. Meaning that he's just acquired all of that money without having to pay a single dollar in taxes. It's good to be rich.)
It's the notional value of multiplying the last sale price times the number of shares he has. He can't spend the money until he sells the shares, and there's no reason to think that they would actually all sell for the last selling price.
In fact, Musk is restricted from selling shares at the moment. His bank balance is the same today as it was yesterday.
(Caveat: he can borrow money today, using the shares as collateral. When the debt comes due, he can sell shares to sell it. So if he wanted additional spending money today, he could have it. Probably not up to the full trillion dollars, but some absurdly large sum.)
(Caveat bonus: he can actually roll over that borrowing indefinitely -- borrow more money to pay back the last one. Meaning that he's just acquired all of that money without having to pay a single dollar in taxes. It's good to be rich.)
You've made my point for me. He will never need to spend the trillion personally, it's humanly not possible, but it was already not possible to spend his previous wealth, and if he had started selling that it would crater, but now, he can sell much more of it before he sees the effect, and this goes on. This is what infinite wealth means, you can continually spend more that you could yesterday. Money is money is money.
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If this makes Elon a trillionaire then he's not the first. All those NFT bros listing their stickers for trillions each have him beat by orders of magnitudes.
Good, I hope he spends it all on big fucking rockets, fast cars and space cities.. but I am sure the usual haters will find some reasons why we should all be angry..
First, we money is a delusion we all agree to share - it has no intrinsic value whatsoever
Second, stock is an even more-removed delusion based on what people _think_ a company might be worth to buy - a value that changes at the drop of a hat (look at the recent massive dips, eg nvidia)
Third, and this is probably the real bummer - all this delusion is just going to make Smelly Tusk even more insufferable. Yay.