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Elon Musk, Tesla CEO, stands in the foundry of the Tesla Gigafactory during a press event.
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Tesla shares fell by more than 5% in pre-market trading Monday after CEO Elon Musk asked his Twitter followers if he should sell 10% of his stock in the electric vehicle company.

Shares of Tesla were down 5.5% to $1,155 at 5 a.m. ET Monday, a significant fall on the $1,222.09 price they closed at when markets shut Friday.

The fall comes after Musk asked his 62.5 million Twitter followers to determine the future of a chunk of his Tesla holdings.

In a Twitter poll launched Saturday, Musk said: “Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock. Do you support this?”

The billionaire gave people the option to vote “Yes” or “No” and pledged to abide by the results of the poll, whichever way it went.

Some 3,519,252 people responded, and 57.9% of them voted for “Yes.”

Musk previously said he was likely to sell “a huge block” of his shares in the fourth quarter.

In September, Musk said at the Code Conference in Beverly Hills, California, that his marginal tax rate will be over 50% when his stock options expire at Tesla, and that he was already planning to sell soon.

“I have a bunch of options that are expiring early next year, so … a huge block of options will sell in Q4 — because I have to or they’ll expire,” he said.

Other current and former Tesla board members, including Robyn DenholmKimbal MuskIra Ehrenpreis and Antonio Gracias have also offloaded hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Tesla stock since Oct. 28, as the company’s stock soared on the Nasdaq stock exchange.

Shares climbed after Tesla posted a record third quarter and car rental company Hertz announced that it was ordering 100,000 Tesla vehicles for its fleet. Musk waited for a week after Hertz made its announcement to say that Tesla had not in fact signed a contract with the company yet. Prior to that statement, he taunted investors who were short shares of Tesla on Twitter, writing: “Tesla Hertz shorts.”

Since the Hertz announcement, Tesla shares have risen considerably and so has Musk’s net worth.

Elon’s tax bill

No matter the results of the Twitter poll, Musk would have likely started selling millions of shares this quarter. That’s because he’s facing a looming tax bill of more than $15 billion.

His options expire in August 2022 but in order to exercise them, he has to pay the income tax on the gain.

Since the options are taxed as an employee benefit or compensation, they will be taxed at top ordinary-income levels, or 37% plus the 3.8% net investment tax. He will also have to pay the 13.3% top tax rate in California since the options were granted and mostly earned while he was a California tax resident.

Combined, the state and federal tax rate will be 54.1%. So the total tax bill on his options, at the current price, would be $15 billion.

Musk, who is also the CEO of SpaceX and brain-computer interface start-up Neuralink, hasn’t confirmed the size of the tax bill. However, he tweeted: “Note, I do not take a cash salary or bonus from anywhere. I only have stock, thus the only way for me to pay taxes personally is to sell stock.”

According to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index, Musk is currently the world’s richest person, ahead of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and French retail tycoon Bernard Arnault. The index states that Musk’s net worth is $338 billion.

Of his considerable Tesla holdings, Musk has options for 22,862,050 shares at $6.24 due to expire on Aug. 13, 2022. These options were awarded to him in 2012.

CNBC’s Robert Frank and Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.

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Cryptocurrencies rise to start the week, bitcoin jumps above $102,000

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Cryptocurrencies rise to start the week, bitcoin jumps above 2,000

The photo illustration shows the Bitcoin cryptocurrency on November 12, 2024 in Shanghai, China.

Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty Images

The price of bitcoin leapt back above $100,000 to start the first full trading week of the new year.

The flagship cryptocurrency was last higher by about 4% at $102,234, according to Coin Metrics. The broader crypto market, as measured by the CoinDesk 20 index, gained more than 3%. Bitcoin and ether are coming off their best weeks since Dec. 6, while Solana had its best week since Nov. 22.

“Overall, we are in a bullish environment and traders appear to be risk-on as we head into the new year,” Mario Jurina, CEO at crypto swaps platform Jumper.Exchange. “With Trump’s election set to be certified today, and January often being a bullish month — six of the past 10 years saw positive price action — it’s no wonder markets are moving upward.”

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Bitcoin rises above $100,000 to start the week

The moves in crypto coincided with a rebound in tech stocks as Nvidia and shares of other chip names jumped. The tech-heavy Nasdaq was last higher by about 1.7%.

Crypto stocks Coinbase and MicroStrategy advanced nearly 6% and 5%, respectively. MicroStrategy Monday morning reported it has purchased another 1,070 bitcoins for about $101 million, bringing its total bitcoin holdings to 447,470.

Activity is coming back into the crypto market after a post-election rally that was driven by promises of a more supportive regulatory environment. The optimism sent prices rocketing for weeks before cooling at the end of the year. The price of bitcoin is expected to roughly double under the new administration this year, with some price predictions, like Fundstrat’s Tom Lee’s, being as high as $250,000.

Don’t miss these cryptocurrency insights from CNBC Pro:

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Amazon’s Ring announces smart smoke alarm as CES tech palooza kicks off

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Amazon's Ring announces smart smoke alarm as CES tech palooza kicks off

Ring security cameras are displayed on a shelf at a Target store on June 01, 2023 in Novato, California. 

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Amazon‘s Ring is partnering with fire safety product maker Kidde to launch a connected smoke alarm, the company announced Monday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

The companies plan to launch Kidde smoke and carbon monoxide alarms that integrate Ring’s home security technology and can deliver alerts to the Ring mobile app. The Kidde Smart Smoke Alarm with Ring will cost $54.97, while the Kidde Smart Smoke and CO Alarm with Ring will cost $74.97. Both products will ship in April.

As part of the launch, Ring will also roll out a $5-per-month subscription service that gives users access to round-the-clock professional monitoring and emergency dispatchers.

Amazon acquired Ring in 2015 for a reported $1 billion. The home security company is primarily known for its video doorbell devices, which allow users to record activity in front of their homes, though it has expanded to include a portfolio of products ranging from camera-equipped floodlights to flying security camera drones.

Amazon doesn’t disclose unit sales for its Ring division, but Ring and rival home security company SimpliSafe comprise one-fifth of the U.S. market for professional monitoring systems, according to data from market research firm Parks Associates. Ring CEO Liz Hamren, who took the helm from founder Jamie Siminoff in March 2023, told Bloomberg last May that the company “recently” became profitable.

Users aren’t required to subscribe to Ring Home, the company’s program that enables video recording storage and other security features, in order to access the new smoke alarm service.

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Global chip stocks climb as Foxconn’s bumper results show a continuation of the AI boom

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Global chip stocks climb as Foxconn's bumper results show a continuation of the AI boom

Jakub Porzyck | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Global semiconductor stocks climbed on Monday after contract electronics giant Foxconn announced record fourth-quarter revenues, suggesting the artificial intelligence boom has far more room to run.

Hon Hai Precision Industry, which does business as Foxconn internationally, said in a Sunday statement that the company’s fourth-quarter revenue totaled 2.1 trillion New Taiwan dollars ($63.9 billion), growing 15% year-over-year.

Foxconn — which is a supplier to Apple — also set a record, posting the highest fourth-quarter revenue ever in company history, according to the statement.

The firm’s bumper revenue performance was driven by growth in its cloud and networking products — which includes AI servers like those designed by the likes of chipmaker Nvidia — and components and other products segments.

Computing products and smart consumer electronics — which numbers iPhone and other smartphones — saw “slight declines,” Foxconn said.

Shares of several semiconductor firms across Asia, Europe and the U.S. rose, as a result.

In Asia, TSMC hit a record high Monday and closed 1.9% higher in Taiwan.

The largest semiconductor manufacturer globally, TSMC produces chips for the likes of AMD and Nvidia.

Other Asian chip firms also logged share price gains — South Korea’s SK Hynix and Samsung rose nearly 10% and 4%, respectively.

In Europe, globally critical semiconductor equipment firm ASML saw its shares jump almost 6%, while fellow Dutch chip company ASMI’s stock rose almost 5%. Germany’s Infineon surged more than 6%.

The momentum in semi stocks could last as they have great earnings momentum, says Jim Cramer

Paris-listed shares of European contract chipmaker STMicroelectronics rose nearly 6%.

Stateside, Nvidia got a boost from the Foxconn numbers, climbing 2% in U.S. premarket trading.

Also boosting chip stocks on Monday was Microsoft’s announcement at the end of last week about plans to invest $80 billion in 2025 on data centers that can handle AI workloads.

Microsoft is one of several tech giants splurging on GPUs (graphics processing units) from Nvidia to train and run the most advanced AI models.

AMD, Nvidia’s closest rival, rose 3% in pre-market trading Monday, while fellow U.S. chip firms Qualcomm and Broadcom both climbed almost 2%.

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