Starting from a re-posted tweet, Musk’s worldview about capital, civilization, and the cosmos has sparked renewed discussion again recently. Before the grand future he calls for—“energy will replace money”—arrives, what did his track record of predictions actually deliver? And what did he miss the mark on? This article will lay out Musk’s distinctive, often “Elon Time”-style future imaginings.
From Musk’s tweets, a set of “worldviews” emerges
Brivael Le Pogam, co-founder and CTO of Argil, published a long post on X on Thursday about capital allocation, saying bluntly: “Once wealth accumulates to a certain level, money is no longer a tool for consumption—it becomes the power to allocate resources.” The piece is driven by the logic of market liberalism throughout. It argues that entrepreneurs can distribute social resources more effectively than government bureaucrats, using Musk himself as a representative case of a “super allocator.” Musk immediately reposted it with: “That’s how the economy actually works.”
This is how an economy actually works
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 29, 2026
This made the author think of Musk’s joke yesterday replying to @beffjezos about SpaceX’s compensation plan. He quipped that Musk’s next compensation package should be: “Achieve Kardashev Type I civilization, reward 10 trillion dollars. Achieve Type II civilization, reward 1,000 trillion dollars.”
That’s a good deal if we make anywhere near K2.
Won’t be using dollars for currency at that point, just mass and energy.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 29, 2026
Musk’s reply is confident: “If we can really get close to Type II civilization standards, this is a good deal. At that point, we also won’t use dollars as currency—we’ll price in mass and energy.”
So-called Kardashev Type I & II are used to gauge a civilization’s advancement level based on the energy level it can harness. The former means the civilization can control and use all available energy on its home planet. The latter means it can control the energy of its entire home star system.
Taken together, the two posts show Musk’s consistent worldview: money is just a transitional tool; the ultimate measure of civilization is mastery of energy; and Musk sees himself as the core actor pushing this leap forward.
A vision raised on sci-fi: from colonizing Mars to consciousness upload
Looking back, Musk has said his worldview is heavily influenced by science fiction, with The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and the Foundation series serving as his mental “comfort food” during his teenage years. These works share a theme: if human civilization is to endure, it must leave Earth and conquer the universe.
This logic later evolved into the “Transhumanism” and “Longtermism” he endorses. At its core is the belief that everything done in the present should follow the aim of maximizing humanity’s long-term survival.
These values take shape across each company under his wing: SpaceX’s mission is to make humanity a multi-planet species, with the goal of building a self-sufficient city for one million people on Mars before 2050; Neuralink focuses on developing brain-computer interfaces, and Musk has further stated that in the future it may be possible to upload snapshots of human consciousness to Optimus humanoid robots, hoping to commercialize it within 20 years; and xAI is positioned by him as a key path toward Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).
At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2026, he even predicted that AI would surpass the intelligence of any single human by the end of that year, evolve into superintelligence in 2027, and see a technological singularity around 2030.
These visions are interconnected, pointing to the same endpoint: human civilization must evolve from Earth-based organisms into an entity across interstellar space. And at that endpoint, any form of fiat currency will become meaningless.
Elon Time: Musk’s much-criticized record of “prediction blowouts”
However, before that great vision arrives, reality provides an entirely different reference point. Musk’s predictions and targets have, one could say, been repeatedly delayed—often missing the mark.
On autonomous driving, since 2019 he has forecast year after year that “full self-driving” would be achieved this year. Eventually, Tesla’s Robotaxi service launched in 2025, and the vehicles still have human safety monitors inside. On the Mars program, he once said people would be sent to Mars in 2024; not only did that fail to happen, but in early 2026 he announced that the Mars plan would be delayed by five to seven years. For the Optimus humanoid robot, the original target of producing thousands of units in 2025 was declared unsuccessful; reports say the team is still working to solve engineering issues related to the robot’s hand movements.
Readers are probably already used to this “Elon Time” pattern: “the direction seems right, but the timeline always slips.” After all, grand future narratives are poised to keep attracting capital, talent, and media attention—so that Musk’s companies can secure far more resources than peers, even before the technology is mature, and sometimes gain unprecedented massive valuations.
SpaceX has indeed brought a reusable rocket revolution, and Tesla has indeed sparked the electric vehicle wave; but behind these achievements is a great deal of early government subsidy support. Compared with the “government is useless” stance he is reposting today, there appears to be a contradiction that’s hard to ignore.
(Musk brings up “universal high income” again: AI takes jobs, and government paying money is the solution)
The power of prophecy lies in “setting coordinates for the future”
Perhaps judging Musk’s vision by how “right or wrong” it is is itself a misunderstanding. His real influence has never been precise prediction—it has been the continual reshaping of society’s collective imagination of “what might be possible” in the future. From rockets to electric cars, from scoffing to rushing to follow, ultimately SpaceX rewrote the cost structure for humanity’s entry into space, while Tesla accelerated the global adoption timeline for electric vehicles.
The line “when money reaches the end, energy becomes the medium of exchange” may even never come to fruition in his lifetime. But he has indeed given people “coordinates” for a vast and boundless future in their minds—making every investment and gamble in the present feel worth it.
This is what Musk does best: endowing mundane commercial activity on Earth with a sense of meaning that carries idealism, even religious overtones—ultimately pushing human civilization forward.
This article, “When money reaches its end, ‘energy’ becomes the trading medium: Is Musk’s cosmic vision prophecy or delusion?”, was first published on Lianxin ABMedia.
