Japanese Billionaire Giving Away $9mn On Twitter As Social Experiment

NEW YORK: As part of his "serious social trial" Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa announced that he would be giving $9 million to 1,000 lucky winners Twitter users to know if money can bring in happiness.

The online shopping mogul announced it on New Year's Eve. Users needed to retweet his tweet before midnight on January 7. Each one of the 1,000 winners will get a million yen each (nearly $9,100).

"A lottery ill determine the winners, and Maezawa will personally notify them in a direct message within two to three days," a media house reported.

In a YouTube video, Maezawa who is worth $2 billion called the contest a "serious social trial" to see what impact a million yen could have on a person's life.

In January 2019, he did the same and distributed 100 million yen ($914,000) to 100 Twitter users. At that time, his tweet was retweeted for a record 4.68 million times.

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