I'm being somewhat facetious, obviously, but in all seriousness Musk's infinite money is heavily dependent on Tesla's share price, as it comprises the vast majority of his wealth, and Tesla's share price is hilariously overinflated. By market cap they're the 11th biggest company in the world, which is a fundamentally broken valuation for a perfectly average car manufacturer.

I mean, let's put this in perspective; Tesla, by market cap, is worth thirty times as much as Hyundai. Tesla sold 1.8 million cars in 2024, Hyundai sold 4 million.

Nothing about that makes sense. Tesla's share price is propped up by nothing but irrational, delusional belief. It's not quite South Seas Company levels of bubble, but damn if it isn't close. That creates a massive danger for Musk. If Hyundai's share price dips, it climbs back up because they make cars people want, and they make a yearly revenue equal to three times their market cap. Those are solid fundamentals. If Tesla's share price dips, it climbs back up because a delusional cult decides to keep digging deeper, but every time it does there's always that danger that the cult might finally go "Hey, wait a minute?" If that share price crashes it will crash hard, and there's very little reason to believe that it would ever recover. Tesla, by all means, could continue to be a $40bn company like Hyundai (and that's frankly being generous), but their only hope of continuing to be a $1.2tn company is this weird investor Mexican standoff where the party keeps going as long as nobody blinks. This is some crypto bro diamond hands only HODL levels of insanity, and it cannot last forever.

Do I believe Musk absolutely will pussy out just because the Tesla share price gets yippy? No, I was being hyperbolic, I'm not actually putting money on it. But do I think he could? Absolutely.