Despite having a personal wealth of several billion, the creator of the online clothing company Zozo inc. Yusaku Maezawa, was little known worldwide until he became the first person to sign up for Elon Musk's Space X project, planning the first civilian voyage to the moon.

Recently he’s been in the news again, since his ‘Happy New Year’ tweet posted on 5th January absolutely smashed the record for most shared tweet ever. A feat achieved the old fashioned way. By promising a whole load of money.

For chance at grabbing some of Mr. Maezawa’s riches, all people had to do was follow his account and retweet the post. He wrote that he would share 100 million yen (about $925,000) between 100 randomly selected retweeters.

Of course, the post was retweeted like wildfire and rocketed past the previously held record for most shared tweet ever. It stands now at 5.6 million RTs.

Dropping into second place is Carter Wilkerson, whose Twitter plea for free chicken nuggets went viral after a retweet challenge issued by American fast food chain Wendy's. They demanded 18 million retweets in exchange for a year’s supply. He didn’t quite get it to that much, but at 3.55 million RTs. it held the record for most retweeted post for a few years, and Wendy's still kindly gave the man his nuggets.

But, after positively flying past Carter’s amount of retweets, Twitter themselves confirmed that Maezawa is now the new record holder.

Space vacations, cash hand-outs, what’s next for Japan’s most eccentric billionaire?