On June 5, 2025, Tesla’s stock fell by 14%, wiping out approximately $150 billion in market value in a single day. The catalyst? A public feud between Elon Musk and President Donald Trump over the proposed repeal of a $7,500 federal EV tax credit, which analysts estimate could cost Tesla $1.2 billion in annual profits.
Elon Musk, who recently stepped down as a special government adviser, fired back on social media, rejecting Trump’s claims and even floating the idea that without him, Trump wouldn’t have won the election. By the next day, Tesla’s stock rebounded 5% on mere rumors of a reconciliatory phone call between the two.
Source: Bloomberg
This extreme volatility, with $150 billion lost, then a partial recovery based on a potential chat, exposes a stark reality: markets are driven by trust, not fundamentals. Trust, or the lack thereof, is the real currency, and Tesla’s upheaval is a case study in what happens when markets are built on personal interactions, not reliable systems.
Marko Ratkovic, the CTO of Graphite Network, an L1 blockchain platform designed to eliminate this type of chaos by embedding reputation-based features directly into its core, commented on the Trump-Musk feud:
“Tesla’s value can change dramatically based on Musk’s public statements or political relationships, not solely on its production or innovation. This is an example of what happens when trust isn’t engineered into the system,” he noted. “The market becomes emotional, not structural. Traders and investors react to tweets, headlines, and breakfast meetings rather than robust, transparent mechanisms. ”
Tesla’s challenges, including a 71% profit decline in the Q1 of 2025 and a 15% drop in vehicle sales compared to the previous fiscal year, make this clear. Besides capital and innovation, reputation highly influences market outcomes.
Unlike the traditional finance markets, which often rely on opinions of individual personalities and political factors, Graphite Network is creating systems where a user’s or project’s trust
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Author: Adrian Barkley
