Thread by @opinion

Not everyone is thrilled by Time’s choice for “Person of the Year,” but it’s hard to deny that 2021 has really been Elon Musk’s year.

Let’s run through the highlights trib.al/g4CfsgL

.@elonmusk is now, on paper at least, the richest person in the world, gaining more wealth in 2021 than Berkshire Hathaway made in revenue trib.al/ju1uIo0

@elonmusk In fact, although Berkshire Hathaway delivers America’s best profits, Tesla’s market cap is way bigger than Berkshire’s. Make sense?

Maybe not in a traditional sense, but this is Elon Musk’s financial market now trib.al/ju1uIo0

@elonmusk To be fair to Tesla, it’s having a good year:

🚗It’s become consistently profitable
🔋Delivered decent gross margins
🔌Its Q3 earnings were described as “normcore” trib.al/ju1uIo0

@elonmusk Tesla has even coped mostly pretty well with the supply-chain issues that have tripped up other manufacturers.

It’s only now that the company is having issues getting hold of raw materials to manufacture EV batteries in the U.S. trib.al/ju1uIo0

@elonmusk Meanwhile, SpaceX has dominated commercial space launches this year. The cost per seat is an absolute bargain:

🚀Apollo program: $390 million (when adjusted for inflation)
🚀Space Shuttle: $170 million
🚀SpaceX Crew Dragon: $55 million trib.al/ju1uIo0

@elonmusk If there’s one thing that Musk is destined to be known for, it’s his tweets – he’s sent about 3,000 this year.

🚽He says half are written on the toilet. It sort of checks out: All but 15 were sent from an iPhone, and when else would a busy CEO get time? trib.al/ju1uIo0

@elonmusk Many of Musk’s tweets are random musings, memes or updates on his companies. But sometimes they control the market.

For example, he only had to tweet about getting Floki, a Shiba Inu puppy, for $SHIB to soar in value trib.al/ju1uIo0

@elonmusk He even used Twitter this year to make a financial decision, asking whether he should sell 10% of his Tesla stock.

It was weird, but he did tell everyone what he’d do in advance even though he didn’t have to. Maybe other CEOs should follow his lead trib.al/ju1uIo0

@elonmusk There are some things happening at Tesla that might need some attention:

Six women are suing over sexual harassment at a Tesla’s Fremont factory and an employee has been arrested for the murder of another employee in the parking lot of that same factory trib.al/ju1uIo0

@elonmusk As Musk closes out the year, it’s nice to look back on what could have been, and how sad he’d be if he’d taken Tesla private in 2018.

Public markets have been extremely generous to Tesla and without them, he wouldn’t be the richest man in the world trib.al/ju1uIo0

@elonmusk We spent a lot of time this year pondering the existence of Elon Musk, his Twitter account and his influence over markets.

@TimOBrien chats about the Tesla CEO’s crazy year with @anjani_trivedi and @liamdenning on @TwitterSpaces. Listen in: twitter.com/i/spaces/1yNGa…