Japanese billionaire gave away $9,000,000 to strangers for one surprising reason

A Japanese billionaire dipped his hands into his wallet and gave away a staggering $9million out of his own pocket to his followers for a reason that may shock you.

That’s right, someone actually gave that much money away - and no, he wasn’t being forced to do so.

Back in 2020, Japanese fashion tycoon Yusaku Maezawa announced he was gifting the huge sum to social media users at random who retweeted a post he shared on 1 January.

He shared his plans on Twitter and explained that the cash would be handed out to 1,000 followers who were selected at random.

This equates to each person selected getting $9,000 dollars each, with a plan for the impact of the money to be tracked through regular surveys.

But, why on earth did he do this, you may be asking? Parting ways with this much life-changing money is a huge decision to be made - even for a rich billionaire.

Back in 2020, a billionaire gave away $9million of his own cold hard cash - but the question is why? (Bloomberg / Contributor / Getty Images)

Maezawa’s reasoning was because he wanted to conduct a real-life ‘social experiment’ to see if the payment would boost the recipients’ happiness.

He was essentially asking the age old question of 'does money make you happy?' by testing it out in real life.

In a YouTube video at the time, he explained that it’s ‘a serious social experiment’ and urged the winners to ‘spend the money as they like’.

By conducting the so-called experiment, the billionaire also hoped to attract interest from academics and economists.

According to NBC News, he tied the giveaway to the idea of basic income, which is the theory of providing a periodic no-strings-attached payment to all citizens in a country - sign us up!

The idea of an unconditional cash payment given to everyone regardless of their income, employment status, or any other factors, is one that has been floating around for years.

At the time of the giveaway, this idea was doing the rounds in political conversations and was backed by former Democratic US presidential candidate Andrew Yang.

However, more than five years on from when the ‘social experiment’ took place and we’re all wondering the same thing - what happened to the cash? Who got it? And did it make them happier?

Japanese fashion tycoon Yusaku Maezawa was the one behind the 'social experiment' (Bloomberg / Contributor / Getty Images)

Well, it seems like we’ll never know as it hasn’t been reported on since and as far as we can see, Maezawa is yet to issue an update.

As the viral giveaway circulated on social media once again this week, Twitter users got to debating the topic of whether money equals happiness.

One user penned: “Turns out it was 9k a piece and there has been no follow up. Id be willing to bet 9k didn't impact them all that much.”

Meanwhile a second and third desperately questioned: “Well did it work? What was the result of his experiment with the $1 million” and “Did they become happier?”

Another social media user pointed out: “Never disclosed. It was 5 years ago and never done again so.”

“No amount of money can make people happy ever,” wrote someone else.

Meanwhile, another added: “True happiness maybe not, but less problems and more freedom, definitely.”

And someone else joked: “Why wasn’t I one of these people? It would have definitely made me happier!”