If you didn't count the "theoretical" wealth you wouldn't call them billionaires in the first place.

That "theoretical" wealth clearly has a massive impact on the real world, so it's silly to pretend it does not exist. For example, Elon didn't buy Twitter with a giant bag of gold coins -- he borrowed against his wealth, which is mostly in stock.

And his "wealth" shrunk far more than what he had to liquidate and pay twitter for.

Because no sane organization will lend out real cash over the same amount of collateral TSLA stock, and leveraged lending opens TSLA to extremely high risk as value dropping would means Musk will be forced to sell to cover/and or stake more TSLA. This is exactly how FTX failed - they counted their own token as their "asset". Spoiler: it didn't work.

Does this wealth have a high impact on the world? Of course it does. But does it has the same impact as same volume of cash? Absolutely not.

Also Zuck lost $100,000,000,000 in wealth when Facebook tanked. Counting beans in hand is not how wealth is calculated.

Many people have a net worth greater than the number of circulating dollars. Also, dollars are not risk-free. They target a few percent annual loss, after all!

I totally agree... crazy times in the past few years. I have heard that some people were able to borrow against their "wealth" (stock holdings, crypto holdings, vested ownership shares) for homes, cars, boats and more since Covid. If their "wealth" suddenly evaporates in the form of losses, they find themselves on the wrong side of the trade. Super duper risky and the appetite for these "products" was immense from what I understand.

He was talking about money, but I think meant wealth based on the context of his response to the OP. They are almost interchangeable, but not in this context.

> Unsold stock should not be quantified until the moment it is sold.

I don't know Elon Musk's finances, but I imagine that he's got a bunch of stock, (let's say) an amount of cash in the tens or even hundreds of millions and debts well above the amount of cash he has on hand. If you don't count unsold stock, then Elon Musk is poorer than most college students.

I agree the numbers are misleading (e.g. Bill Gates money is very diversified and he has already paid many of the capital gains on microsoft stock sales, so comparing his wealth to Elon Musk's with a single number is quite misleading). But you have to count unsold stock for something.