Elon Musk trolls Jeff Bezos as he extends lead as world’s richest man

Elon Musk took a dig at his rival Jeff Bezos when he replied to Amazon founder’s tweet with a silver medal emoji on Twitter.

This comes after the Tesla and SpaceX CEO promised to do so after he overtook Bezos as the wealthiest man in the world in September.

Elon Musk’s lead as the richest person in the world has grown by $10.6 billion after a secondary share sale by investors valued SpaceX over $100 billion, according to CNBC. Musk now has a personal wealth of $222 billion, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. Bezos has a net worth of $191.6 billion.

Musk tweeted the second place medal at Bezos on Monday after the Amazon founder posted a message about overcoming adversity.

“Listen and be open, but don’t let anybody tell you who you are. This was just one of the many stories telling us all the ways we were going to fail,” Bezos tweeted.

He was referring to a story published in 1999 that referred to Bezos as “just another middleman”.

In September, Musk told Forbes he’d send Bezos a silver medal and a statue of the number two after he surpassed Bezos as the wealthiest man in the world.

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While competing to be the richest people in the world, Musk and Bezos are also involved in a billionaires’ space race.

For months the men have been criticising each other on Twitter. Musk recently slammed Bezos over the many lawsuits and petitions that were filed in opposition of SpaceX, including US space agency Nasa giving SpaceX the sole grant for human lunar exploration.

Bezos filed a complaint around SpaceX developing a second-generation Starlink satellite system.

Billionaires getting richer

Musk and Bezos are not the only billionaires getting richer. The Forbes 400 report earlier this month showed the collective fortune of billionaires in the United States increased by 40% over the last year.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is America’s third-richest person after Facebook stock increased. Bill Gates was relegated to fourth after he transferred around $5.7 billion worth of Deere & Co and Canadian Railway stock following his divorce from Melinda French Gates.

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