SpaceX is not a publicly traded company. SpaceX does not have a market capitalization in the way Tesla does. SpaceX cannot lose market cap the same way you cannot lose a marathon you never entered.
The headline claims SpaceX wiped off $1.2 trillion. That's not how private companies work. Private companies get valued during funding rounds by venture capitalists who are essentially playing poker with other people's money. One guy writes a check for $100 million at a $150 billion valuation and suddenly every financial journalist treats that number like it was handed down from God on a stone tablet.
Then the valuation goes down in the next round and we get breathless coverage about how much money evaporated. Except it didn't evaporate. It was never real. It was always just a number some guy in a Patagonia vest agreed to during a PowerPoint presentation.
The real victims here are the retail traders who somehow convinced themselves they could get rich off a company they cannot buy shares in. These people are checking SpaceX news every day like they're tracking a stock position. They're arguing about SpaceX's valuation in Reddit comments. They're making spreadsheets. One guy probably has a price alert set up for a ticker symbol that does not exist.
SpaceX could be worth $200 billion today and $80 billion tomorrow and $300 billion next week depending entirely on which Sand Hill Road firm needs to mark up their portfolio before their next LP meeting. The number means nothing. The volatility means nothing. The comparison to Tesla's market cap is like comparing your Monopoly money to actual currency.
Elon Musk is still the richest man on Earth and SpaceX still has a monopoly on affordable orbital launches, so I'm sure he's devastated about the imaginary number going down.
Photo by Brecht Corbeel on Unsplash
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