He doesn't have $200,000,000,000 in cash.. he has stock, the value of which is exclusively depended on buyers exchanging their $ for it. There's nothing stopping any publicly traded stock from collapsing in value to the physical assets of the company minus any debts or liabilities.

According to this thing I found on the internet[1], if I read it correctly, Tesla is worth $31B if it were stripped and sold.

Most of Elon's wealth is Tesla stock... far more than the actual value of the company, by a factor of more than 5. If he has any debts against his stock, those could be his downfall.

[1] - https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/tsla/financials/...

It could if your $200 billion valuation is based on the stock of over-valued companies which you used to over-leverage-borrow, and you need every free penny to continue paying back debt and keep that stock price high.

Elon owns 16% of Tesla and Tesla stock is the vast majority of his wealth. If the market cap of Tesla were to crash below $150 billion it would be in the territory where his penalty to Twitter could be multiple billions more than the value of his Tesla stock.

I personally don’t think Tesla is worth even $100 billion. However, the markets disagree, and it is difficult to imagine a scenario where Tesla loses 80% of its value.

…but it’s not totally inconceivable.