On Saturday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk ran a poll on Twitter asking people whether or not he should sell some of his Tesla shares.
Musk said, ‘Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock.’
Of the 3,519,252 users who voted, in the poll, 57.9% said they supported the proposal.
Musk sold, in all, nearly $5 billion in Tesla stock, according to financial filings out Wednesday evening.
His trust sold more than 3.5 million shares worth over $3.88 billion in a flurry of trades carried out Tuesday and Wednesday. Those transactions were not marked as 10b5, meaning they were not scheduled sales.
The Twitter poll was for a separate block of Tesla shares, via a plan that he set in motion back in September. That sale was about 930,000 shares worth over $1.1 billion.
Musk sold these shares in part to satisfy tax obligations related to an exercise of stock options.
He still holds more than 166 million shares.
Following the Twitter poll, shares of Tesla slumped more 15% over Monday and Tuesday, before rebounding more than 4% on Wednesday.