Elon Musk said this week that becoming a quadrillionaire is 'not impossible' — but only if you build factories on the Moon and Mars first. The SpaceX founder added that in that future, dollars won’t cut it: currency would be based on mass and energy. The remarks came days after SpaceX’s historic $2 trillion IPO debut on Nasdaq, which briefly made it the sixth most valuable US company.
Quadrillionaire by Mars
Musk laid out the math during a public appearance: to hit a quadrillion dollars in net worth, you'd need massive off-world industrial capacity. 'Factories on the Moon and Mars,' he said. And the money? 'It won't be dollars. It will be based on mass and energy.' The comment echoes earlier speculation from Musk about resource-based economies beyond Earth. He also joked about finally securing a 'volcano lair' he has referenced for years — a dry nod to the Bond-villain optics of quadrillionaire talk.
SpaceX’s $2 Trillion IPO
The IPO is the biggest in history, but the numbers behind it are staggering in their own right. Musk projected SpaceX could hit $1 trillion in revenue by 2030, though the company posted $18.7 billion for 2025 — a long way from that goal. The real kicker: Musk’s pay package ties 200 million super-voting shares to a single condition — a permanent Mars colony of at least one million people. No colony, no shares. That gives the 'quadrillionaire' talk a concrete business logic, even if the timeline is decades out.
A Seat for a Crypto Billionaire
SpaceX has already assembled its first Mars flyby crew, and one seat went to a crypto billionaire. The company hasn’t named the passenger yet, but the pick signals that Musk sees crypto wealth as a natural fit for his interplanetary ambitions — especially if future Mars trade runs on a token backed by joules and kilograms rather than fiat.
The Colony-or-Bust Pay Package
That 200-million-share condition isn’t just a gimmick. It forces Musk to deliver a self-sustaining Martian city before he can unlock the stock. Given SpaceX’s current revenue, the timeline to $1 trillion is aggressive. But the IPO gives the company a war chest to start building the factories Musk mentioned. The next concrete milestone: the first crewed Mars mission, expected to launch sometime in the late 2020s. Whether that mission lands the crypto billionaire on the surface or just loops around the planet remains the open question.
