Elon Musk Sells $5 Billion Worth of Tesla Shares After Twitter Poll

• Tesla CEO Elon Musk has sold around $5 billion worth of shares from his stake in the electric car maker

• The sale comes about 4 days after the billionaire asked his Twitter followers if he should sell 10% of his stake in the company.

• The trade is his first share sale since 2016 when the billionaire had to remit a tax bill of $600m

Days after asking if he should sell shares of his company, Tesla CEO, Elon Musk has sold more than $5bn worth of his shares in the electric car company.

In the past 2 days, the company’s shares have fallen by more than 16% after the billionaire directed his shares sales question to his followers.

According to BBC, Musk sold 3.6 million shares of the automaker worth around $4 billion.

He then sold 934,000 shares for about $1.1bn after acquiring additional 2 million shares, according to filings with the US stock market regulator.

The filings show that 20% of the share sale was planned since September, even before the billionaire made the post on social media.

The billionaire initiated the share sales idea so that he could pay tax since he was not being paid in cash by the car company.

Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock. I will abide by the results of this poll, whichever way it goes.”

The poll had more than 3.5 million votes, with the majority being in support of him selling the shares of the company.

This marks Elon Musk’s first share sale since 2016 when he sold shares to cover an income tax bill of $600 million.

The SpaceX CEO remains the richest man in the world, according to Bloomberg with an estimated net worth of $280 billion.

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