Musk Offers Reward for Proof of Emerald Mine

He mentioned father's share in mine in 2014 interview
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 14, 2023 9:52 AM CDT
Musk Offers Reward for Proof of Emerald Mine
Elon Musk departs the Phillip Burton Federal Building and United States Court House in San Francisco on Jan. 24, 2023.   (AP Photo/Benjamin Fanjoy, File)

Elon Musk is offering a reward of 1 million Dogecoin—the equivalent of almost $90,000—to anybody who can prove that he owned an emerald mine. He made the offer in response to a tweet from the DogeDesigner account, which has posted dozens of pro-Musk tweets in recent days, the New York Post reports. "Musk never owned an emerald mine. An open offer of 69.420 Doge to all the media outlets who are publishing false information," the tweet said. "Send me proof of its existence & take your doge." Musk added: "I will pay a million Dogecoin for proof of this mine’s existence!"

The South African-born billionaire, from what the Post describes as an "upper middle class" family, has often complained about claims that he got his start in business with money from an "apartheid emerald mine." While there's no sign Musk himself ever owned an emerald mine, he has mentioned in at least one interview that father Errol Musk was the part-owner of an emerald mine in the 1980s. "This is going to sound slightly crazy, but my father also had a share in an emerald mine in Zambia," Musk told Forbes in 2014, describing a harrowing trip to the mine in his father's private plane.

In 2018, South African news site News24 reported that Errol Musk's share in the mine helped "fund his family's lavish lifestyle of yachts, skiing holidays, and expensive computers." In a Facebook post, Errol Musk said the report was accurate, but noted that income from the mine collapsed in 1989. He added that it was unfair to associate the mine "with what Elon has achieved through hard work since he left South African shores as a teenager of 17."

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The Forbes interview in which Musk mentioned the mine is no longer archived on the publication's website, Futurism noted earlier this year after Musk tweeted: "The fake emerald mine thing is so annoying (sigh). Like where exactly is this thing anyway!?" Interviewer Jim Clash said he didn't know why it had been taken down. "I did interview Elon, he said what he said, and I don’t know why they’d take it down," Clash said. (More Elon Musk stories.)

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