JAPANESE billionaire Yusaku Maezawa’s expanding list of cash-fueled bragging rights includes Picassos, Bugatti supercars and a ticket on Elon Musk’s rocket to the moon. He can now add to that collection the mantle of having the most-ever retweeted Twitter post.

For the honor, the founder of Japan’s second-largest online shopping site Zozo Inc. will be paying out a total of 100 million yen (US$920,000) to 100 lucky people who shared the post. Seeking to be one of the randomly chosen winners, Maezawa’s audience retweeted his post a record 3.8 million times and gave it more than 900,000 “likes.”

The previous record holder for retweets was a college student in the United States whose goal was to get a year’s free supply of chicken nuggets from Wendy’s fast-food franchise. That post had 3.58 million retweets and 990,000 likes. Ellen DeGeneres’ 2014 Oscars selfie with Hollywood stars including Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie was second with 3.3 million retweets.

“To participate, all you have to do is follow me and RT this tweet,” Maezawa wrote. The tweet featured a picture of a man astride a rocket silhouetted against full moon, in a style of the iconic image from the movie “E.T.”

Maezawa also touted that his shopping site Zozotown reached 10 billion yen in merchandise volume during a New Year’s sale. The business is the main source of the 43-year-old’s US$1.7 billion in net worth, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

(SD-Agencies) Yusaku Maezawa

In the latest headline-grabbing move by Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, the founder and CEO of major online fashion mall operator Zozo Inc. has announced a plan to dole out 1 million Japanese yen to 100 individuals to mark a successful New Year’s sale.

Maezawa, who is scheduled to take a trip to the moon in 2023, wrote on Twitter late Saturday that he would give away a total of ￥100 million in cash out of his own pocket to 100 followers on the social media service who follow his account and retweet his post by the end of Monday.

“The Zozotown New Year’s sale was the fastest ever to reach sales of ￥10 billion,” he wrote, “So as a gesture of my appreciation, I will personally be giving a present of ￥1 million in cash to 100 people for a grand total of ￥100 million.”

The tweet quickly went viral, garnering more than 2.5 million retweets as of late Sunday after smashing the previous Japan retweet record earlier in the day. It also prompted an incredible upsurge in users following Maezawa’s Twitter account, which went from some 500,000 prior to Saturday’s post to some 2.94 million by late Sunday.

In another tweet Sunday, the Zozo chief thanked those who had already participated, saying he believed a “dream,” not cold, hard cash, was the motivating factor behind the attention surrounding his plan.

“I think that what everyone wants is a dream, not the money,” he wrote. “If you have ￥1 million, you want to use it for something like friends, family members, society and animals. This makes me want to cry because the use is aimed at things other than yourselves. Japan, you’re not half bad. You have many dreams. As for the retweets, I understand we hit a new Japan record. ... Thank you.”

In mid-September, Maezawa captured global attention after announcing he would embark on an 800,000-km trip around the moon and back aboard the BFR spacecraft developed by Elon Musk’sSpaceX, along with several artists he plans to invite.

The billionaire, who would become the first private lunar traveler, said he hopes to contribute to world peace, a desire that was given greater urgency following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States. Because of this, he said he was seeking “artists committed to making the world a better place.”(SD-Agencies)