Elon Musk’s net worth has reportedly taken a massive hit following his appearance on Saturday Night Live. During the show, the Tesla CEO joked that Dogecoin is a “hustle,” resulting in a 35% drop in its value.
Additionally, Musk announced that Tesla would no longer be accepting Bitcoin as a form of currency to purchase their electric vehicles, causing a sharp drop in Bitcoin’s value. Musk cited environmental safety as the leading concern in his decision.
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“Tesla has suspended vehicle purchases using Bitcoin,” Musk said. “We are concerned about rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal, which has the worst emissions of any fuel. Cryptocurrency is a good idea on many levels and we believe it has a promising future, but this cannot come at great cost to the environment. Tesla will not be selling any Bitcoin and we intend to use it for transactions as soon as mining transitions to more sustainable energy. We are also looking at other cryptocurrencies that use <1% of Bitcoin’s energy/transaction.”
To top it all off, Tesla shares have fallen 15% in value over the last week.
All-in-all, Forbes reports that Musk’s losses from this week total $20 billion.
Grimes, who is dating Musk and also appeared on the SNL episode, was hospitalized after the show, having suffered a panic attack.
[Via]