Billionaires Musk And Zuckerberg Lose Billions In Crypto

Feeling down because you’ve lost money in crypto investments or the stock market this year? You’re in the company of billionaires. Apparently Cathie Wood (the best stock picker on Wall Street in 2020 and 2021), Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Tesla CEO Elon Musk have all lost billions on crypto investments this year as well.

On social media forums like 4Chan or Reddit we call it ‘loss porn’, gleaming over other people’s (or your own) financial losses. In this case we’ll have a look at the billionaire losses that have been brought to bear in the past few weeks.

Zuckerberg loses $3 billion

Mark Zuckerberg decided at the end of 2021 to change the name of his company Facebook into Meta and to invest heavily in the so-called Metaverse, the crypto powered virtual worlds that will be developed in the next few years and decades. As Bitcoin, Ether and many other plunged in value, so did Zuck’s investment. The social media company admitted this week that it’s metaverse division suffered a loss of $2.81 billion for the quarter. Year-to-date losses are at an eye-popping $5.77 billion.

Zuckerberg himself remains convinced of the long term strategy, stating:

By helping to develop these platforms, we’re going to have the freedom to build these experiences the way that we and the overall industry believe will be best, rather than being limited by the constraints that competitors place on us.

I feel even more strongly now that developing these platforms will unlock hundreds of billions of dollars, if not trillions, over time.

Elon Musk losing billions on Twitter, Bitcoin and Doge

Although the specific amount remains unknown, it has become clear that Elon Musk’s company Tesla has lost several hundreds of millions of dollars ($440 million according to media estimations) on its initial investment in Bitcoin (and Doge, which it admitted to owning as well).

Musk also made a big bet on his takeover of Twitter, but got out of the deal when it became clear that the company would not disclose (according to Musk) the true number of fake accounts on the platform. No matter which way the court case goes, Musk is set to lose a few billion on his $44 billion initial investment.

Cathie Wood buying high, selling low

Earlier this week, when it became clear that Coinbase (the largest US crypto platform) was being probed for alleged insider trading, Cathie Wood ordered her Ark Investment Management firm to dump a total of more than 1.4 million shares of the company.

In essence, Wood has bought high (at around a price of $255) last year and sold low (at around a price of $53) this year. Her very popular ARK fund is down more than 50% this year.

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