Elon Musk has offered up one million Dogecoin for anyone who can provide evidence of the emerald mine rumour that has followed the billionaire for years.
The world’s richest man has been followed by rumours that his family owned part of an emerald mine, and hence that his riches are not self-made.
Musk was born in South Africa into what the New York Post reports as an upper-middle class family. His mother Maye worked as a dietician and model, whereas his father Errol had a multitude of jobs, including as a property developer and engineer.
However, it has been suggested in the past that Errol also had interests in an emerald mine, a claim that Musk disputes.
DogeDesigner, a Twitter account, said: ““Elon Musk never owned an emerald mine. An open offer of 69.420 Doge to all the media outlets who are publishing false information. Send me proof of its existence & take your doge.”
In response to this, Musk himself tweeted: I will pay a million Dogecoin for proof of this mine’s existence!”
One million Dogecoin equates to around $84,000, which is a tiny fraction of his total $185 billion fortune.
In the past, the billionaire has been quoted as saying in an archived Forbes interview: “This is going to sound slightly crazy, but my father also had a share in an emerald mine in Zambia.”
However, in recent years he has distanced himself from the rumour.
Last year he wrote: “He [Errol] didn’t own an emerald mine & I worked my way through college, ending up ~$100k in student debt. I couldn’t even afford a 2nd PC at Zip2, so programmed at night & website only worked during day. Where is this bs coming from?”
Then, in January, he said: ““The fake emerald mine thing is so annoying (sigh). Like where exactly is this thing anyway!?”
The news comes after weeks the fifty-one-year-old filling the headlines.
He has changed Twitter’s ‘w’ to read ‘Titter’ in the past, and he recently published a photo of the company’s San Francisco headquarters in which the ‘w’ looked to be painted white.
Musk claimed that his landlord at the SF headquarters had told him that they had to preserve the Twitter sign and could not remove the ‘w’, so they had painted it in the background colour to fix the issue.
According to reports, Musk has reportedly been fascinated on this issue for some time. In April of the previous year, he set up a poll on his website asking his fans if he should remove the letter “w” from Twitter’s emblem outside of their San Francisco headquarters.
Due to his erratic and attention-seeking behavior, Musk was compared to David Brent, a fictional character from the hit TV series The Office.
The software tycoon, who is known for being unpredictable and unafraid to push boundaries, has developed a reputation for his unorthodox social media antics that have almost become his signature.
He frequently makes announcements, expresses his ideas, and engages in lighthearted banter with both supporters and detractors on Twitter.
With more than 134 million Twitter followers, Musk’s every online action is intensely scrutinised by his supporters, detractors, and the media.
