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Japanese online-shopping billionaire Yusaku Maezawa isn’t afraid to make it rain with his $2 billion fortune — as in, he’s already forked over cash to be the first moon tourist, and he once paid a whopping $111 million for a painting.
For his next trick, he’s giving away $9 million to 1,000 Twitter TWTR, +0.41% followers. The catch: They had to retweet him. And retweet him they did.
Behold, history’s second-most retweeted tweet, which was just posted last week:
The only tweet that’s been retweeted more times came from Maezawa last year, in which he offered the same kind of deal, but with less money:
In a YouTube video announcing this year’s payouts, Maezawa called it a “serious social trial” aiming to see if free money leads to increased happiness. The effort, he said, is driven by a curiosity about universal basic income, a pillar of Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang’s campaign.
Maezawa, who sold his online fashion business Zozo to SoftBank for $900 million in November, said he would personal notify each winner within days.
As for the third-most retweeted tweet, that belongs to this unabashed lover of Wendy’s WEN, +0.62% chicken nuggets:
