Japanese Billionaire Yusaku Maezawa Is Giving $9 Million to Random People on Twitter

999 out of 1,000 times, if you think the phrase 'free money' sounds too good to be true, it most likely is. But now, thanks to Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, it's going to be very much a real thing for 1,000 lucky peoplein the name of a social experiment. Maezawa is giving a million yen, which roughly equals $9,000, to 1,000 Twitter users who follow and retweet him. The goal, he says, is to test something we've all wondered about: the correlation between money and happiness.

The tweet in question, of course, is written in Japanese. But Twitter's Translate function has allowed people of all languages to understand Maezawa's message. We will give 1 million yen to 1000 people! I wish your life will be happier with 1 million yen. The application method is follow me and retweet of this tweet, he wrote in the Tweet, which has now been retweeted 4.1 million times.

10 # 1001000 100 1723:59 YouTube https://t.co/kBgwwmJoaP pic.twitter.com/1Fr0Vq4i6Z Yusaku Maezawa (MZ) (@yousuck2020)

Maezawa (who has a net worth of $2 billion, according to Forbes ) is no stranger to public stunts involving quite a lot of money: in 2018 he bought every seat on SpaceX's first passenger flight around the moon , and in 2017 he bought a Jean-Michel Basquiat painting for $110 million , the most ever paid for a piece by an American artist.

In a YouTube video where Maezawa explains the contest/experiment, Business Insider says he expressed intrigue with the concept of universal basic income.

Those who retweeted the tweet will be entered in a lottery, and 1,000 winners will eventually be chosen. They'll be allowed to use the money however they wish, but will have to report periodically on their spending via surveys.

We're eagerly awaiting to hear how this all plays out. It already sounds like a great moviecould this be the long-awaited Rat Race follow-up that our nation has so desperately been seeking?