January 23 news, in the past week, technology stocks and cryptocurrency prices have plummeted, resulting in heavy losses for many of the world's super-rich, and the net assets have evaporated by a total of $67 billion.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk lost $25.1 billion, equivalent to a 9% decline in their net worth, but he is still far ahead of the rest of the world's richest people with a net worth of $243.4 billion.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, whose fortunes have shrunk by $20 billion and currently have a net worth of $167.6 billion, still ranks second on the rich list.
It is followed by French luxury retailer Magnate Bernard Arnault, worth $167.5 billion, which has threatened Bezos' position. Arnault is also the only person in the top ten of the rich list in the past week who has not lost much of his net worth.
Microsoft founder Bill Gates, with a net worth of $128.6 billion and a loss of $4.3 billion, came in fourth. Google co-founder Larry Page is in fifth place with a fortune of $116.5 billion. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg's fortunes shrank by $10.4 billion.
In addition to Arnault, Musk, Bezos, Gates, Page and Zuckerberg lost a total of $67 billion in net worth.
The past few days have been the worst week for the stock market since the outbreak of COVID-19. Big-name companies have been hit hard, with U.S. interactive fitness platform Peloton falling below initial public offering (IPO) prices and video streaming giant Netflix suffering its biggest drop in 10 years. Chipmakers' stocks also underperformed.
By Friday's close, the technology-based Nasdaq was down 7.6 percent in the week, its biggest drop since March 2020. It was also the fourth consecutive week of decline in the index, the longest decline in nine months.
The Federal Reserve, which is highly likely to raise interest rates, is scheduled to meet next Tuesday and Wednesday. Investors hope it will provide details about the rate hike plan as soon as possible. The stock market turmoil is expected to continue into next week, when companies such as Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Intel and Tesla will issue earnings reports.
Last week, cryptocurrency prices also suffered, with Bitcoin falling to a 6-month low and the value of other digital assets also affected. With investors losing hundreds of billions of dollars in a week, the already plummeting trend in the cryptocurrency market has become even more pronounced. Over the past week, the price of Bitcoin has fallen by 16.8%. Other cryptocurrencies lost even more, with Ethereum down 25%.
This was the worst new year start in Bitcoin's history. After hitting an all-time high of nearly $68,000 last November, its current price is less than $35,000. Zhao Changpeng, founder of cryptocurrency trading platform Binance, lost $17.7 billion.