Top 10 Richest People's Wealth Drops by 208 Trillion Won This Year Due to Stock and Cryptocurrency Plunge

No.1 Musk's Wealth Decreases by 65 Trillion Won... Impact of Chip Shortage
Warren Buffett's Assets Increase Alone... Up 2.2%

[Image source=Reuters Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Hyunwoo Lee] Since the beginning of the year, with the sharp decline in tech stocks and the drop in cryptocurrency prices in global markets including the United States, the wealth of the world's top 10 billionaires has decreased by more than $172.65 billion (208.4 trillion KRW) in just one month this year.

According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index on the 29th (local time), the combined personal wealth of the top 10 billionaires was $1.3192 trillion as of the 27th. This represents a decrease of $172.65 billion, about 11.6%, in just one month since the start of the year.

The person whose wealth decreased the most is Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, known as the world's richest person. His wealth dropped to $216 billion, down $54.1 billion, or about 20.3%, from the beginning of the year. Notably, $25.8 billion was lost in a single day on the 27th. This was due to Musk's announcement that Tesla would not release new cars this year because of the shortage of automotive semiconductor chips, causing the stock price to fall more than 11% that day. Tesla's stock price has fallen about 30% compared to the start of the year.

Among the world's top 10 richest people, the only individual whose wealth increased this year was Warren Buffett, known as the "Investment Master." Buffett's wealth rose to $111 billion, an increase of $2.39 billion, about 2.2%. He surpassed Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, by $1 billion to move up to 6th place. Zuckerberg's assets decreased by $15.2 billion.

Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and the world's second richest person, saw his wealth fall by $27.8 billion to $164 billion. Bernard Arnault, chairman of the fashion group Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy (LVMH), ranked third, saw his wealth decrease by $19.4 billion to $159 billion, and Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft (MS) and ranked fourth, saw his wealth drop by $11.1 billion to $127 billion.

Other top 10 billionaires include Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, and Oracle chairman Larry Ellison. Most of their personal wealth decreased by more than $10 billion.

Meanwhile, Zhao Changpeng, a Chinese-Canadian founder of Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, saw his wealth decrease by $30.2 billion due to the sharp drop in cryptocurrency prices. Zhao's wealth was recorded at $65.6 billion, ranking 16th.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.