Billionaire Elon Musk Flips The Script: Wall Street Bad Boy Rewrites The Rules
Billionaire Elon Musk is a maverick in many aspects of his life — and refuses to change simply to please his investors or the media. Take his Twitter tirades as an example.
Musk is under fire with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over errant tweets he sent in August 2018, where he threatened to take Tesla private. Two weeks later, Musk backpedaled.
While his posts amused his legions of fans on social media, investors slammed Musk after his flippant comments tanked Tesla’s stock in the days that followed, as the Inquisitr reported.
LinkedIn Co-Founder: Elon Focuses On The Big Picture
Billionaire Reid Hoffman — the co-founder of LinkedIn and a former colleague of Musk — told CNBC that Elon’s Twitter outbursts are merely expressions of his frustration over the media’s myopic focus on Tesla’s bottom line.
Hoffman said Musk’s Twitter storms do not signal that he’s unstable — or a bad CEO.
“[Elon is focused] three, five, 10 years into the future,” Hoffman said. “Part of his grit, part of his determination to get to that long future, is to push back.”
Like President Donald Trump, Musk does not hide his brash personality. Media experts say that’s why Musk has such popular appeal.
In September 2018, Musk made headlines after a hilarious video emerged of the Wall Street bad boy gleefully smoking pot on a podcast with comedian Joe Rogan.
Elon Musk in one GIF. pic.twitter.com/pLrPYN2tW1
— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) September 7, 2018
Musk is well aware of the fascination that the media and business world have with him. So it’s no wonder that the 47-year-old South African mogul is forcing Wall Street to adapt to his irreverent personality and business style.
Musk — who holds South African, U.S., and Canadian citizenship — is the founder and lead designer of SpaceX, whose goal is to make space travel more accessible to the average person.
Musk is also the co-founder and CEO of Tesla, the California-based electric car manufacturer. Tesla, which has been in business since 2003, has garnered outsized media attention and investor adoration despite the fact that it has never turned a profit.
In June 2018, Musk — whose net worth tops $20 billion — told employees in a company email that he couldn’t care less about Tesla being profitable because he’s more concerned about producing a truly revolutionary car, CNBC reported.
Musk To Media: ‘You Lost Your Credibility Long Ago’
While most CEOs play up to the media, Elon Musk doesn’t care to — because he considers the press fundamentally dishonest, as the Inquisitr reported.
“The holier-than-thou hypocrisy of big media companies who lay claim to the truth, but publish only enough to sugarcoat the lie, is why the public no longer respects them,” Musk tweeted.
He added, “anytime anyone criticizes the media, the media shrieks ‘You’re just like Trump!’ Why do you think he got elected in the first place? Because no ones believes you anymore. You lost your credibility a long time ago.”
During an unforgettable post-earnings conference call in May 2018, Musk got testy with analysts and reporters, whom he dismissed for asking “boring, bonehead questions.”
An impatient Musk also said that he doesn’t care if day traders profit from Tesla stock.
“We have no interest in satisfying the desires of day traders,” Musk said. “Please sell our stock and don’t buy it.”
Is Elon Musk Satoshi Nakamoto?
Musk is a walking contradiction in at least one manner, given that he’s a fan of cutting-edge technology — but is totally apathetic about bitcoin.
“I literally own zero cryptocurrency, apart from 0.25 BTC that a friend sent me many years ago,” Musk confessed on Twitter in February 2018.
Not sure. I let @jack know, but it’s still going. I literally own zero cryptocurrency, apart from .25 BTC that a friend sent me many years ago.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 22, 2018
In November 2017, Musk denied speculation that he was Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious inventor of bitcoin. The rumors erupted after a former SpaceX intern, Sahil Gupta, wrote that “Satoshi is probably Elon” in a blog post on Hacker Noon.
Gupta explained: “Elon is a self-taught polymath. He’s repeatedly innovated across fields by reading books on a subject and applying the knowledge. It’s how he built rockets, invented the Hyperloop (which he released to the world as a paper), and could have invented Bitcoin.”
Satoshi Nakamoto’s true identity has never been confirmed, but Elon Musk insists that it’s not him.
