Elon Musk no longer world’s richest person as Tesla shares fall

Elon Musk no longer world’s richest person as Tesla shares fall

Elon Musk, the maverick boss of Tesla, is no longer the world's richest person after shares in the electric car company dropped 8.6% on Monday, wiping $15.2bn (£10.8bn) off his fortune.Musk, who last month leapfrogged Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to take the title of the world's wealthiest person, dropped back into second place with a $183bn estimated fortune behind Bezos' $186.3bn.The 8.5% drop in Tesla's share price on Monday – the sharpest one day fall since September – was partly fuelled by Musk tweeting that the prices of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies “do seem high”. Telsa's shares were down another 6% in pre-market trading on Tuesday.His comments came just two weeks after Tesla bought $1.5bn of bitcoin, which sent the price of the cryptocurrency to fresh highs. Bitcoin, which reched a high of $58,000 on Sunday, has since fallen to $47,500 on Tuesday morning. The price is still up more than 500% over the past year.Replying on Twitter to Peter Schiff, a stockbroker and gold investor, Musk said: “Money is just data that allows us to avoid the inconvenience of barter. That data, like all data, is subject to latency and error. The system will evolve to that which minimises