The cartoon raccoon entrepreneur is already “the world’s first trillionaire,” beating Elon Musk

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is reportedly set to become the world’s first trillionaire by 2024 – but it’s estimated that an Animal Crossing entrepreneur is already 1,276 times richer than him

The world’s richest man, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, is on track to become the world’s first trillionaire by 2024.

At least he thinks so.

The Tesla boss is worth around £200bn, but even his vast wealth is surpassed by an enterprising video game character for players to haggle with.

According to research by financial experts at Money.co.uka wily entrepreneur from the hit Nintendo game Animal Crossing, has already beaten Musk.

The game’s uncompromisingly tough-as-nails business raccoon tycoon, Tom Nook, has a combined net worth of more than £245 trillion.

Nook might be a cute looking raccoon, but he’s got his fingers in a lot of pies, with players around the world counting on him for cell phone and banking services, and even access to Animal Crossing’s Dodo Airlines.

Not only do Animal Crossing players owe Tom Nook large mortgages that they have to pay back by earning Bells, the game’s virtual currency — they’re also forced to use his company shop, which sells everything from furniture to decorations for their virtual ones houses sold.

If you combine the real world value of Tom Nook’s home loans, property portfolio, fleet of flights, banking and telephone services and his infamous Cranny Network, he would be worth £245,246,033,887,418.

That’s a lot of dough and makes the raccoon more than 1,276 times richer than Elon Musk.

The totals were calculated on the basis that a bell in Animal Crossing is worth around one Japanese yen, meaning a fully stocked three-story house in the game could cost more than £35,552, or 5.2 million bells.

If Elon Musk wants to snag the trillionaire title sooner, he could take a leaf out of Tom Nook’s book by combining ruthless business savvy with uncompromising monopoly capitalism.

The second richest villager in Animal Crossing is Ankha, an Egyptian cat with a personal pyramid and a golden toilet.

It is worth around £2,564 (364,050 Bells), further demonstrating the huge wealth disparity between the 1% and the 99%.

Who is Elon Musk and how did he make his billions?

Musk owes much of his fortune to being the driving force behind several hugely successful companies — including Tesla, SpaceX, and what is now PayPal.

Musk was born in June 1971 in Pretoria, South Africa.

After moving to Canada at the age of 17 to attend Queen’s University, he moved to the States to attend the University of Pennsylvania.

After a brief stint at Stanford University, he later decided to enter the business world, which would eventually earn him his billions.

He began by founding dot-com boom company Zip2 with his brother Kimbal Musk.

The Musks sold the company to Compaq in 1999 for $307 million, of which Elon received around $22 million.

That same year, Elon Musk co-founded online bank X.com, which later became PayPal and was bought by eBay in 2002 – and he got an additional $100 million.

Also in 2002, Musk founded SpaceX, a company aimed at reducing the cost of space travel so humans could colonize Mars.

In 2004 he moved to electric car manufacturer Tesla as CEO and became CEO in 2008.

This is where Musk really made a lot of money.

Tesla pioneered the move to electric vehicles.

In 2008, the company made the first mass-produced electric car to use lithium-ion batteries, the Roadster.

It also made the world’s best-selling electric car, the Model 3, which launched in 2017 and has since sold more than 500,000 units.

But the key to his net worth is how well Tesla stock has performed.

The company went public in July 2010 at $3.84 per share.

The stock price rose very slowly until 2019, when it really picked up steam — and is now worth $650.28 per share.