Elon Musk stated cash douldn’t matter. Then he unveiled X Cash and stated he is a ‘former trillionaire’

On July 24, Musk posted “(Former) Trillionaire” on X, a uncommon public acknowledgment from a person who not often concedes floor. The publish got here as his fortune stored sliding. He’d first dropped under $1 trillion on July 1, and the losses continued from there. This week alone, SpaceX shares fell one other 4.8% on Monday to round $109.50, extending a 50% plunge because the inventory’s June 16 excessive and pushing Musk’s internet value under $700 billion for the primary time since December.

Forbes put the determine at roughly $695.7 billion, down from the $1.45 trillion peak he hit six weeks earlier when SpaceX’s IPO briefly made him the world’s first trillionaire. All informed, Musk has misplaced about $750 billion on paper, practically the mixed internet value of the subsequent three richest males on the planet, Larry Web page (roughly $268.5 billion), Sergey Brin (roughly $270.6 billion), and Jeff Bezos (roughly $252.6 billion).

The publish can be ironic given what Musk had simply informed The Economist. Days earlier, in a wide-ranging interview with editor-in-chief Zanny Minton Beddoes at Tesla’s Texas Gigafactory, Musk predicted that cash “gained’t matter” by 2036, arguing AI and robotics will ultimately produce extra items and providers than anybody may eat.

Days after video of the interview unfold on his social media platform, Musk unveiled X Cash, the fee function he’s promised for years as a part of X’s push to change into an “every little thing app.” He posted “That is cash” on X, and the service started rolling out to Premium and Premium+ subscribers on July 27, the identical week his personal fortune was cratering.

Cash is all relative

X Cash provides customers a digital pockets constructed into X: a deposit account, peer-to-peer transfers with no charges, and a steel Visa debit card tied to their X deal with. IT’s the primary model of a plan Musk first floated in a 2022 investor pitch deck, the place he described X as ultimately rivaling China’s WeChat. Visa signed on as X Cash’s first associate in early 2025.

Musk has made comparable feedback prior to now. Musk has been constructing towards this identical argument for months. Simply weeks in the past, across the time of SpaceX’s IPO, he informed XPRIZE founder Peter Diamandis that “cash will cease being related sooner or later sooner or later,” arguing that when AI and robots produce extra items and providers than the cash provide can match, foreign money loses its objective.

Diamandis identified the irony within the second, as Musk had simply change into the world’s first trillionaire. Earlier this yr, on saving for retirement, Musk stated the apply will change into pointless as a result of AI-driven productiveness will exceed “what folks probably may consider as abundance,” with a “common ‘you possibly can have no matter you need’ earnings” changing the necessity to save in any respect. On the podcast Folks by WTF, he stated cash “disappears as an idea” as soon as AI and robotics can meet human wants with out wages functioning as a method to allocate labor.

The timing made the second stranger. Days after the tweet, Musk unveiled X Cash, the fee function he’s promised for years as a part of X’s push to change into an “everything app.” He posted “This is money” on X, and the service began rolling out to Premium and Premium+ subscribers on July 27 — the same week his own fortune was cratering.