Tesla co-founder and CEO Elon Musk may be testing the “you can’t ever have too much of a good thing” idea.

Musk made a brief splash in the public spotlight when he hosted Saturday Night Live on May 8, and, while he was very solid as a performer – when measured against other non-actors, of course – his business fortunes have not reacted favorably.

The man who also founded SpaceX and continues to push for expanded space exploration saw his net worth feel some serious gravitational pull, falling from $166 billion to $145.5 billion.

Tesla’s shares dropped near 15 percent, as the price was more than $670 when Musk took the SNL stage and was trading at $585 by midday Friday ET.

He’s probably not in panic mode, but he has fallen all the way No. 3 on the world’s wealthiest people list.

The mixed messages he delivered on SNL, too, probably furthered the uncertainty over bitcoin – a character he played in a sketch admitted Dogecoin was “a hustle” — and, in real business life, he tweeted that Tesla reversed a decision to use bitcoin for transactions.

That didn’t sit well, either, as most of the cryptocurrency market shed a good bit of value. 

Dogecoin dropped more than 30% within 24 hours of his SNL appearance, and Musk’s bitcoin decision, based on environmental concerns, caused bitcoin to fall below $50,000 for the first time since April 24.

In a Forbes story, Wedbush suggested investors don’t know what to make of the Musk-influenced landscape, and, the investment firm noted, Tesla has become unpredictable — because of Musk but also because it has been swept up in the market’s tech stock sell-offs and is facing uncertainty with its role in China. 

It’s enough to cause a $20 billion worry.

 

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