The 5 Richest Billionaires Lost $85 Billion Due to a Brutal Market Sell-Off

Last October, we brought you the news that even as 89 million Americans lost their jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic, the net worth of billionaires in the U.S. rose by an average of 70 percent. Now, things are no longer looking so bright for tech billionaires.

According to Bloomberg, in a matter of weeks, Changpeng Zhao of Binance lost $17.7 billion, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta lost $10.4 billion, Bill Gates of Microsoft saw a $9.5 billion drop in his fortune and Jeff Bezos' wealth of Amazon decreased by $20 billion. In total, the five richest tech tycoons lost $85 billion.

This was all due to last week's market sell-off.

Two days ago, we reported that over $1 trillion had been lost from the aggregate crypto market due to the Federal Reserve's plans to withdraw stimulus from the market. 

The Bespoke Investment Group said at the time that the crash “gives an idea of the value destruction scale that percentage declines can mask.”

The only one of the world's five wealthiest people whose fortune remained intact was Bernard Arnault, the chairman, and CEO of the French luxury group LVMH. However, that does not mean that Arnault has not suffered at all: his wealth decreased by $10.5 billion this year.

The new list of wealthiest people in the world according to the new Bloomberg Billionaires index is now as follows: Elon Musk with $243 billion, Jeff Bezos with $168 billion, Bernard Arnault with 167 billion, Bill Gates with $129 billion, Larry Page with $117 billion and Mark Zuckerberg with $113 billion.

Of course, all these men still have more money than we regular folks can imagine but the drops in fortune may still put a dent in their future development plans. Will they be able to recover their losses in 2022? Only time will tell.