The world's richest man in 2022 worked for nothing for a year and still lost money? His net worth evaporated too much

It is learned that the stock market crash of US technology giants in 2022 caused a huge evaporation of the wealth of the world's richest people. Tycoons such as Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos lost $1.4 trillion in 2022.

One-time cryptocurrency wunderkind Sam Bankman-Fried was accused of fraud; Russia's devastating war in Ukraine led to severe Western sanctions against its corporate giants; and an unexpected investment by Twitter's new owner Elon Musk left him $138 billion richer than he was on January 1, 2022.

Combined with a backdrop of widespread inflation and aggressive central bank tightening, the year marked a sharp decline for a group of billionaires whose fortunes rose to unthinkable levels during the pandemic-era era of easy money. In most cases, the bigger the rise, the bigger the fall: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg have collectively lost $392 billion in net worth.

The ranking of the world's richest people saw major swings. Indian Gautam Adani's wealth index surpassed that of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, while some of the world's richest families, including the Kochs and Mars, also saw their wealth increase.

Here’s a month-by-month review of the data and stories that defined a turbulent year for billionaires.

January: Warning shots

Musk, then the world’s richest man, lost $25.8 billion on Jan. 27 after Tesla Inc warned of supply problems. It was the fourth-biggest one-day drop in the history of the Bloomberg Wealth Index and foreshadowed a tough year for Musk, both personally and financially.

February: Oligarchs lose wealth

Russia’s richest people lost a total of $46.6 billion on February 24, the day Vladimir Putin ordered his army to launch an extraordinary military operation against Ukraine. Soon after, the European Union, the United Kingdom and the United States imposed sanctions on Russian oligarchs and their companies, causing a huge drop in the wealth of these tycoons.

Meanwhile, the richest Russians lost an estimated $47 billion during 2022 as the war escalated.

March: A crackdown on Chinese wealth

China's markets have been deteriorating, with the country's richest people losing $64.6 billion in wealth on March 14. They have lost another $164 billion in 2022 as arduous efforts to contain the coronavirus, a housing market collapse, increased scrutiny of the tech industry and trade tensions with the United States have hit the world's second-largest economy. China's richest people have also seen their wealth shrink.

April: Musk's strategy on Twitter

Musk offered to buy Twitter outright on April 14 at a valuation of $44 billion. To finance the deal, he initially borrowed billions of dollars, sold more Tesla stock and invested $21 billion in cash. The acquisition went badly, and Musk began a months-long legal battle with Twitter. When the deal was completed in October, the tycoon's net worth was $39 billion less than when he initially made the offer.

May: Bury buys Chelsea

A group led by billionaire financier Todd Boehly has won the bid to buy Chelsea for £4.25 billion ($5.25 billion), the highest price ever paid for a sports team, capping a two-month bidding frenzy that attracted more than 100 bidders from around the world, including British billionaire Jim Ratcliffe, Apollo Global Management co-founder Josh Harris, co-chairmen Bain Capital’s Steve Pagliuca and Citadel’s Ken Griffin, and the Ricketts family.

June: Walton stays with Broncos

Rob Walton, heir to the Walmart fortune, has agreed to buy the Denver Broncos for $4.65 billion, setting a record for an American sports team and highlighting the enduring appeal of owning an NFL franchise. Walton’s consortium includes Rob’s daughter Carrie, her husband Greg Penner, Ariel Investments Chairman Mellody Hobson, race car driver Lewis Hamilton and Condoleezza Rice.

The deal makes Hobson and Rice the first black women to own an NFL team. Walton led a bid that beat out Clearlake Capital Group founder Jose Feliciano, United Wholesale Mortgage CEO Mat Ishbia and Harris. (Ishbia and his brother would agree to buy a majority stake in the NBA’s Phoenix Suns in December.)

July: China's construction crisis

Yang Huiyan lost her title as Asia's richest woman after her wealth more than halved in seven months during China's real estate crisis. Country Garden Holdings, the developer that Yang inherited from her father in 2005, has benefited from a surge in residential construction in recent years. But a stagnation in real estate development in 2022 has left Country Garden's share price and Yang Huiyan's wealth yet to recover.

August: Adani rises

A coal tycoon may sound like a relic from another era. But as the world reels from the war in Ukraine, Adani, an Indian coal mining tycoon with a rapidly expanding empire, surpassed Gates and Frenchman Bernard Arnault to become the world’s third-richest person in late August. It is the highest position ever held by an Asian billionaire.

Adani has used debt to rapidly diversify his relatively opaque conglomerate, the Adani Group, into ports, data centers, highways and the controversial green energy sector. In September, he briefly surpassed Bezos to become the world's second-richest person.

September: Zuckerberg's downfall

Zuckerberg has suffered in a tough year for U.S. tech giants. As of mid-September, his net worth had fallen by $71 billion, or 57%, since Jan. 1, as a costly pivot to the metaverse and an industry-wide collapse dragged down shares of Meta Platforms Inc. Over the course of the year, the Bloomberg Wealth Index dropped 19 spots to end 2022 at No. 25, its lowest position since 2014.

October: COVID-19 Billionaire Crash

The COVID-19 bubble economy is shrinking rapidly, and with it the wealth of the covid billionaires who have amassed huge fortunes from industries spawned by the pandemic era. Such as Stéphane Bancel of Moderna, used car tycoon Ernie Garcia II and Ernie Garcia of Carvana, Bom Kim who bet on online shopping Coupang, and Eric Yuan of Zoom.

But in the post-epidemic era, as the epidemic was effectively controlled, the asset value of 58 billionaires from all walks of life created by the epidemic era fell by an average of 58% from their peak, a larger drop than other richest people in the Bloomberg Wealth Index.

November: From $16 billion to zero

The 30-year-old Bankman-Fried, who had a $16 billion fortune, lost everything in less than a week after the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX following a liquidity crisis that exposed a porous balance sheet and lack of risk controls in his empire. At his peak, his net worth was $26 billion.

The Bankman-Fried debacle shamed many Washington politicians because Bankman-Fried defrauded many charities, humiliated Silicon Valley investors, and left nearly a million customers facing a dilemma of failing to get what they wanted.

Meanwhile, the Binance CEO, known in crypto circles as CZ, has seen his net worth drop by about $84 billion this year, while fellow crypto billionaires Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, Michael Novogratz and Brian Armstrong have sought to distance themselves from the FTX debacle.

December: Musk steps down

Musk's throne as the world's richest man was squeezed out by Arnault, the French luxury giant behind LVMH (Louis Vuitton). Although Arnault was not immune to the challenges of 2022 and lost about $16 billion throughout the year, it is still a small matter compared to Musk's more than $138 billion evaporated.

Editor ✎Estella/

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