SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 11 (IANS): Elon Musk has offloaded Tesla shares worth USD 5 billion, after he was trolled on Twitter for a controversial poll last weekend where he proposed selling 10 per cent of his stock in the electric car-maker.

Initial filings in the US showed that Musk had sold 9,34,091 shares for about USD 1.1 billion, out of more than 2.1 million options he received as part of a compensation package.

The filings that were posted later on Wednesday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) showed that Musk sold another 3.58 million shares in Tesla. That sale was valued at about USD 4 billion, reports TechCrunch.

The world’s richest man had earlier posted two of the costliest tweets in the history of Global Inc.

In a tweet announcing the poll over the weekend, Musk said: “Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10 per cent of my Tesla stock. I will abide by the results of this poll, whichever way it goes.”

Nearly 58 per cent of Elon Musk’s followers who participated in his Twitter poll told him to sell 10 per cent of his stock (worth USD 24 billion) in the electric car company, ostensibly to pay more tax.

Musk posted: “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.”

The bloodbath that followed sunk Tesla stock by USD 200 billion (market capitalisation was USD 1,211 billion on November 5 end of day and USD 1,023 bn on Tuesday).

Musk’s own net worth took a USD 50 billion beating.

He has been a vocal critic of a proposal to tax unrealised gains on publicly traded assets in the US.