Elon Musk's tweets are costing Tesla CEO's status as 'world's second richest man'

New York: Elon Musk's Twitter posts keep sending Bitcoin prices tumbling. His own fortune is heading in the same direction.

On Monday, Tesla Inc.'s CEO lost his spot as the world's second-richest person to LVMH Chairman Bernard Arnault as the electric vehicle-maker's shares fell 2.2 per cent. That was on top of last week's slump amid a global rout in technology stocks and fresh signs of trouble in its China business.

Musk, who held the top spot in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index as recently as March, now has a fortune of $160.6 billion, down 24 per cent from its January high. The drop follows a turbulent period for Musk, who sent Bitcoin tumbling as much as 15 per cent last week after posting a statement on Twitter that Tesla was no longer accepting the digital currency as payment. He also helped to whipsaw Dogecoin prices after tweeting he's working with developers of the Shiba Inu-themed token to improve transaction efficiencies.

Tweet havoc

Over the weekend, Musk wreaked havoc again when he seemed to imply that Tesla may sell or has sold its Bitcoin holdings before later clarifying in a tweet Monday that the company had done no such thing.

Musk became the world's richest person in January after Tesla's shares surged almost 750 per cent last year amid a boom in technology-driven stocks. Despite reporting record first-quarter profit, the company's shares have since fallen by about a fifth amid a global semiconductor shortage and increasing competition from traditional automakers.

Musk's fortune has dropped about $9.1 billion this year, the most among US-based billionaires tracked by Bloomberg's wealth index. Meanwhile, Arnault, 72, has added the most, with his networth climbing by almost $47 billion to $161.2 billion as sales of his firm's luxury goods surge in China and other parts of Asia.