He had been climbing the ranks all throughout the late 2010s and early 2020s, but the $56 billion windfall of Tesla stock was what truly gave him a leg up in the lonely race to the Scrooge McDuck golden mountaintop. Last year Musk sold about 10% of his Tesla stock to, in his words, pay for taxes that he's been criticized for avoiding. During his deposition, Musk also took aim at a Securities and Exchange Commission consent decree that was supposed to put a stop to Musk drastically impacting stock prices with his loose-lipped tweets.