Elon Musk is giving away a million dogecoin

The world’s richest man — who was born in South Africa — has been dogged by rumours that he’s a nepo baby.

In fact he was born into an upper-middle class family in Pretoria. His mother Maye worked as a model and dietitian and his father Error worked many jobs including as an engineer and property developer.

A number of news reports, such as one in the New Yorker, state Errol had an interest in an emerald mine.

But Mr Musk disputes this.

Twitter account DogeDesigner wrote: “Elon Musk never owned an emerald mine. An open offer of 69.420 Doge to all the media outlets who are publishing false information. Send me a proof of its existence & take your doge.”

And in response Mr Musk wrote: “I will pay a million Dogecoin for proof of this mine’s existence!”

That amounts to about AU$124,000. That’s small change for Mr Musk, who has a net worth of about $270 billion (US$185 billion), according to the Forbes real-time billionaire list, mostly through his shares in Tesla and SpaceX.

Last year he wrote: “He [Errol] didn’t own an emerald mine & I worked my way through college, ending up ~$100k in student debt. I couldn’t even afford a 2nd PC at Zip2, so programmed at night & website only worked during day. Where is this bs coming from?”

And Mr Musk wrote in January: “The fake emerald mine thing is so annoying (sigh). Like where exactly is this thing anyway!?”

There is a report that claims he did once say his father owned a mine during an interview with Forbes in 2014. “This is going to sound slightly crazy, but my father also had a share in an emerald mine in Zambia,” Mr Musk was quoted as saying. The article in question is no longer live on the Forbes website but is archived.

Fact-checking site Snopes reports that there is no evidence to support the emerald mine rumour.