The world’s most exclusive club has no members…yet

Nathan Martinez
Jul 28, 2017 · 8 min read

Co-written with Mick Emmett

The Trillionaire Club (hint Jeff Bezos will not be the first member)

Until very recently the phrase “trillion dollars” was rarely used. Well, outside of references to GDPs of the US, China and EU, that is. And the term “trillionaire” wasn’t really used with any semblance of reality. Even with the World’s Richest Man title bouncing around among Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos, and Carlos Slim, the totals were well under $100 billion. That’s changing.

If you’ve found your way to this article then chances are that you’ve been reading and hearing about the race to be the first $1 trillion corporation (by market cap). That’s been happening for a few years, and things are seriously heating up among the contenders, with Apple the odds-on favorite to get there first, but by means is it a sure bet given the competition. In fact, just in the tech industry alone the five biggest players — Alphabet (aka Google), Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft — are now collectively worth north of $3 trillion.

Dr. Evil Will Need to Adjust His Asking Price Again

So a corporation — actually several — will break the trillion dollar barrier in the not-so-distant future. That’s a given. But what about an individual? Aside from crazy movie villains, there hasn’t been anyone even in the ballpark of trillionaire status. Just the concept of “trillion” is hard to wrap one’s head around if given some real thought. A few things to noodle on:

  • If you lived to be 80, you would have to save $34 million every day of your life to be a trillionaire
  • One trillion 1-dollar bills placed end-to-end would reach about 96 million miles, or close to the distance from the earth to the sun
  • If you spent one dollar per second, that would equal $86,400 in one day. Keep up that pace for a year and you hit $31.5 million. To get to a trillion at that rate you’d have to live for 32,000 years (and man, what a boring life that would be!)

Gates? Bezos? Buffett? Slim?

To answer the above: No. No. No. And no. The world’s first trillionaire is already among us, but it most likely won’t be one of the usual suspects. You can’t inherit or marry into a trillion dollar net worth since that club (the “Thirteen Digit Club,” if you will) is so exclusive that it doesn’t have any members yet. Let’s face it — if Jay-Z and Beyonce can’t even get it, that is one damn exclusive club. And despite what you might think if you move to Zimbabwe, that strategy is not going to work either.

Even with our usual suspects there would have to be some kind of massive scaling event that pushes them to trillionaire status. After all, none of them are even 1/10 of the way to being a trillionaire. Each of them makes roughly $1.5 million per hour: every hour of every day. And that’s not going to get them there anytime soon, and probably not even in their lifetimes.

So What Exactly IS the Route to Becoming a Trillionaire?

Talk to people who have given this question some thought or do some research and you’ll find many different answers. Standing in a ubiquitous line at a Whole Foods with a basket full of $8 boxes of cereal and $11 cold pressed juices and you’d be hard pressed not to guess soon-to-be owner Jeff Bezos (via the pending Amazon acquisition). Amazingly the answer is “no”! But let us double check the math on that and get back to you.

16 Psyche, a giant metal asteroid that NASA has its sights set on, is a great answer given that its mineral wealth is estimated to be worth 10,000 quadrillion. But getting there is a big problem, never mind getting all that cargo back to earth. Sure, there are actual asteroid mining companies working on this, but don’t expect to see any asteroid belt engagement rings in your jewelers window anytime soon.

The first trillionaire will get there via tech innovation. Not a shocker. But what type of tech is the real question.

No, Not Software

Look, it could be software that propels the first trillionaire, but we doubt it. The biggest problem with this route is scale. In 2017, the software market is infinitely more crowded than it was when Microsoft, Oracle, and even Salesforce got into the game. Plus, open-source software was just a dream in the heads of idealistic software developers. Those three companies — and many others that have revenues into the billions per year — will continue to make tons of money, but it gets harder and harder to scale the bigger the company gets. For almost every application there is a free and/or cheaper solution to the problem, and that isn’t going to change.

No, Not Mobile

Apple and Samsung are the two 800 lb. gorillas here, and neither of them is has anything close to a trillion dollar mobile phone business. Similar to software, it gets harder to scale as the business grows and saturates each market it enters. Billions of people all around the world — including some of the poorest places on earth — have some kind of mobile phone. They’re not all using iPhone 7s, but a mobile phone is a mobile phone. There are interesting ideas to scale this industry via cheap smartphones (hello Jio Phone and “India Stack” combo), but the hurdles to a trillion dollar market cap are just too overwhelming to be realistic, in our opinion.

No, Not AI

OK, it could very well be artificial intelligence (AI) that does it. That’s not where we would put most of our chips here at Realm Labs, but a lot of smart people will (and are). There is a lot known about AI, and it’s being used now across industries and across the world. But its future is very much an unknown. Some think it will just always be a useful tool for humanity to make incredible gains in all facets of life and business, and some think we’ll be polishing the metal casings of our robot overlords before the 2020s are out. Someone could very well hit upon the right application at the right time with the right AI platform and be the first trillionaire. But for our (digital) money, the answer is….

Blockchain Will Do It

Like a lot of technology that we use in our everyday personal and business lives, blockchain is a platform with multiple uses. The most widely used and well-known uses (or protocols) are cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ether (discussed in depth in an earlier RL article). What’s interesting in the case of blockchain is, unlike with most platforms, the protocols are worth more than the platform. Also interesting — and differentiating — is that blockchain is public. Sure, there are private blockchains built by banks like JP Morgan, but almost all the action is built on public blockchains.

The first trillionaire will bet big on a particular blockchain protocol that he/she thinks will become a standard that potentially billions of consumers and businesses will use. Think of this blockchain use case as if it were an island that practically everyone wants to visit. The first trillionaire probably won’t even “own” the island, given the public and open source-ish nature of blockchain. However (you knew there was a “however” coming), this person will be the largest holder of the fuel and roads that gets people there. He/she will take a cut of every trip to the island; maybe only 10%, or even less. Multiply that times billions and billions of trips to the island, and hello first member of the Thirteen Digit Club!

That’s how this person will get there. Like top contender Jeff Bezos, this person will have to play the long game (i.e, not be focused on profits and able to sustain losses for years) and bet big before any other big players get there. Before anyone even knows what this “island” will be, where it is, and how to get there. In fact, there’s a good chance that some contenders will lose everything on this bet.

The First (Potential) Trillion Dollar Wealth Producer Died Almost 75 Years Ago

Everyone has heard of Tesla, the innovative automaker founded by Elon Musk. But far fewer know that the company was named after one of the world’s brightest minds, Nikola Tesla. Tesla the man was an Austrian-American scientist, inventor, engineer and all around polymath who was born in 1856 and died in 1943. He is best known for developing the alternate current (AC) electricity supply system. There are plenty of places to learn about Tesla’s incredible life and story, so we’ll just focus here in how he could have been the world’s first billionaire way back in the early 20th Century. Back when a cold brew iced coffee cost about 8 cents, as opposed to $5. And had he done so, by now his successor(s) could very well be in the lead for the first trillionaire given the scale of his idea.

In a nutshell, there were three players in the nascent electricity supply business: Westinghouse, Edison and Thompson-Houston (Edison and T-H later combined to form General Electric). Tesla and his AC method and patents were aligned with Westinghouse, and he was receiving an annual royalty from them. Well, Westinghouse was having some serious financial problems, and in 1907 they went to Tesla and basically said, “Pretty soon we’re going to run out of money and you’ll have to try collecting from the banks that we are in debt to.” Seeing as Westinghouse was championing his AC system and the others weren’t, he let them out of the contract. One could look at that action as an incredible act of generosity…or the biggest financial mistake of all time. Especially given that Tesla died penniless.

Becoming a Trillionaire in 3 Easy Steps

Our advice to you, the world’s first trillionaire, is simple:

  1. Watch blockchain developments like a hawk (and AI, too, just as a hedge)
  2. Pick one use case and invest in it (at least in the tens of millions, for starters), nuture it, and grow it
  3. Help and nurture each Dapp built on your blockchain protocol and if possible…(own part of the IP)
  4. Watch as its use explodes worldwide and billions of consumers and businesses use it and take a small percentage of the action

That’s all there is to it!

DISCLOSURE: We wrote this article ourselves, and it expresses our own opinions. We are not receiving compensation for it. Views shared here are our own and cannot, under any circumstances, be interpreted as an official account of any companies we are associated with — currently or in the past.

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