Is this a financial hallucination? @elonmusk was not even in the world’s top ten richest people until 2020. Now he is the world’s first trillionaire.
It is absurd, but not fake.
This was not some slow, stately climb through the billionaire league table. Musk crashed into the top ten during Covid, rode the Tesla mania, fell back when markets turned, then launched into another universe as SpaceX was marked at a much higher valuation.
As others have pointed out to me, this wasn't luck. This was 24 years of SpaceX history being priced in by public markets, helped a bit by the addition of an AI business.
That is the story in this animation. These are shares, private valuations, collateral, market mood and a huge wager on the future, all compressed into one ridiculous number: $1.3 trillion as of today.
Once the financial system agrees to treat paper wealth as real, it becomes real enough. It can be borrowed against. It can be pledged. It can buy control, influence and time. It can decide which companies get funded, which technologies get built and which version of the future attracts capital.
That is the mad part. Musk’s fortune is both real and ridiculous at the same time.
Real, because markets, banks and investors have endorsed it.
Ridiculous, because a large part of it can move violently when sentiment changes, a rocket explodes, Tesla rerates, or investors decide the future is worth a different price.
This feels like a chart about modern wealth becoming stranger, faster and more detached from anything most people would recognise as money.
What do you think?
Music: Mr. C-137 by Basixx, Epidemic Sounds
@itskevinyegon@randomworldke What are you saying sir? Why should barriers be needed to stop people from doing what they already know is wrong? That's like stitching an anus to treat diarrhea instead of addressing the actual cause. Arrest them!
Plans released for a $16 billion mile-long ship capable of carrying 80,000 people.
The 'Freedom Ship' would be home to about 50,000 people, with space for 10,000 tourists and 20,000 crew members.
"The Freedom Ship is envisioned as a permanently mobile city at sea designed for long-term residence rather than short-term travel," the company says.
The ship would be about 8 times the size of the current largest ship in the world, the Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas.
The plans include a 15,000-seat stadium, schools, colleges, shops, clubs, a water park, a music hall, museums, parks, and more.
The ship, which would run on nuclear, would be too large to dock and would remain in international waters.
Freedom Cruise International says it would go around the world every two to three years.
Insane.