Forget Musk and Bezos – falling markets in crypto and tech carry risks for us all

We do need to worry about investors who bought shares or crypto at the wrong time and stand to lose money they cannot afford, writes Hamish McRae

With a mere $201bn, Elon Musk is down 41 per cent from his peak last November, when he was briefly worth $340bn (Reuters)

A lot of wealth has been destroyed in the past few months, and the rich have lost most of all. Elon Musk remains the wealthiest person in the world, but with a mere $201bn, he is down 41 per cent from his peak last November, when he was briefly worth $340bn.

Jeff Bezos, No 2 in the league, is now worth only $131bn, down 39 per cent from his peak. There is a thing called the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which tracks the top 500 billionaires’ wealth on a daily basis, so they can see how they are doing – though I suspect that if you are that rich, being up or down a few billion is not that much of an issue.

From a British perspective, perhaps the most interesting thing is not how rich Americans are – we know that – but how poor British billionaires are by world standards. The list is full of Indians, French, Germans, Chinese and Russians, but the highest-ranked Briton comes in at number 119. That is Sir James Dyson, with $14.4bn to his name.