The Chaser Report - Elon Musk's Trillion-Dollar Heist

Episode Date: June 10, 2026

Charles takes a deep dive into Elon Musk's trillion-dollar heist and how he's legally created the world's biggest Ponzi scheme. Plus, Dom announces his new company, Quantum Chaser, which is disrupting the new space of quantum comedy — invest now! ---Listen AD FREE: https://thechaserreport.supercast.com/ Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] CEO’s Super-yacht upgrade Fund: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. And Charles is coming in off the long run up to talk about the space X. Yes. I'm excited because I just, you know, I've managed to scrape together a hundred bucks, Charles. And I'm just, I want to put it invested in the future. I want to turn that $100 bucks into $1,000 and then $10,000.

bucks. And to come a millionaire, Charles, just with my little hundred bucks here. And I think Elon is going to do that for me, isn't he? Well, let's find out after this. This is not investment advice, by the way. It's not even necessarily credible financial analysis. Charles, um, okay. So, so Dom, what we're witnessing here in the next few days is the greatest heist in the history of humanity. Oh, I definitely want in. Yeah. So where do I put my hundred So what's happening is, so, you know, Elon Musk owns tons of companies, Tesla, obviously, Twitter, X-A-I, which is an AI company. Never forget the boring company that does tunnels.

The boring company. I think he has, but don't forget. He, and he, so he's trying to raise a whole lot of money for SpaceX. And SpaceX is basically a rocket company, and it's very successful. It's launched hundreds of, it launched, it launches. is hundreds of launches every year. Yeah, and mainly of Starlink. It's its own, that's the other thing.

It's also a company that does satellite internet everywhere. And actually, if you look at the sort of circular nature of, say, even just SpaceX's core business, right, you sort of get a sense of the sort of financial genius that Elon Musk is, right? Financial genius. So not a tech genius. No, not someone who can, you know, invent an incredible electric car. My argument is that Elon Musk's.

Great innovation is nothing to do with technology ever. It's always to do with his ability to manipulate finance, to allow him to get all the capital and somehow run away before everything collapses. Well, he's supposedly about to become a trillion, admittedly on paper. Yes. I mean, paper's presumably out of date. Well, it's a financial mechanism. And in actual fact, this is the whole point that Elon Musk makes,

which is actually money itself doesn't exist. It's just entries on a... ledger. You know, that's his whole idea, is that essentially if you can just move the numbers around and manipulate them well enough, you can do anything you want in the world. How inspiring. Yes. It can be what you want to be if you can shuffle enough debt. And so, but, you know, like, so what happened was Elon Musk, who famously wants to go to Mars, set up this rocket company, called SpaceX, but it kept on losing money. And his initial idea was he'd just get NASA, he'd just do contracts for NASA, right? And then he found,

That actually requires far too much accountability. NASA didn't like the fact that his rockets were exploding all the time. They threatened... Feature not a bug. Yeah. Well, exactly. No, that's right. I've got a friend who's a rocket scientist who actually says

one of the great things about SpaceX is the appetite for risk is so much higher. For explosion. Because he actually said that, no, no, I understand your point. It's funny. You get so many, so much more data out of something gone wrong, like an explosion. Than you get when something just launches success. We have so much data from the operations of the chase-row and we've never borrowed money for it.

We're clearly not very good managers anyway. Anyway, so Elon Musk, way back when, when, okay, how do I prop up this failing rocket company? I know, I'll set up another company called Starlink, which needs a whole lot of rocket launches to get into space. And its whole business model is we'll make disposable satellites that only last for about nine months each. Do they last for nine months? They only last about nine months.

Really? They're called low Earth orbiting satellites. They only go up 100 kilometres in the air. It's hardly space. But what this requires is a constant use of rockets to get all these disposable satellites up there. Well, ask the dumb question. How do we not hit them when we get in planes? Is it because they're geosynchronous?

We know where they are? It's because they're 100 kilometres up. Planes only go about 10 kilometres up. Okay. Oh, that's relief. Right. Thank you for clarifying that. Charles, by the way, someone I know is just quite a –

let's just say a part of the world where it's not the best idea to go. Yeah. And just joined a Zoom call from the portable Starlink device. Have you seen this? It fits in a backpack. Oh, they're amazing. It's incredibly high tech and amazing. And yeah, it's just funny that that genuinely useful product comes from Elon just wanting

some justification for, he's not thinking about freedom and, you know, giving it from the internet. It's all about, well, I've got to use Rockers to do something. But this is the whole genius, right, is there are. are kernels of products that actually work in a lot of his things. So you can't point to Elon Musk and say he's a total fraud. It's not like a Bernie Madoff situation where the whole thing was, you know, just recruiting chumps to pay off the last chump who invested, right? It's actually, but it has very similar vibes to a Ponzi scheme. Because essentially what's going on with

the space ex-IPO is that there's a whole lot of investors who've invested in him in failed projects. So, for example, Twitter. You didn't all those sort of like Saudi Arabian public investment fund and Qataris and so on didn't talk about Qatar, but yeah, certainly a lot of those countries. He famously overpaid. He paid $44 billion for Twitter. It wouldn't have been worth more than about $12 billion. And then single-handly destroyed most of that value himself.

Yes. And then all these investors went, well, what are you going to do to make us right, right? And instead of sort of going, oh, well, sucks to be in business with Emil Musk, he went, okay, actually Twitter is an AI company. He created this new company, which was actually separate from Twitter, but used all the data from Twitter called XAI. In other words, spinning off the value from company A to company B.

Yeah, so that's a bit, that's a bit phoenixy, isn't it? So with Tesla, so as all these people on the vision of an electric car, gets bored by electric cars, goes, well, it's a robotics, company. Yes. Presumably at some point he'll then spin that off into a robotics company and leave all the car investors high and dry. Yes.

And the same thing with Twitter. He's all the kind of sexy bit of it's now being split off into another company. In fact, he's constantly shifting bits of value between his companies and just hope, assuming everyone's going to be okay with it. And the whole, and the key there is he doesn't leave all his investors behind. What he does is he allows, like with the Twitter X-A-I thing, he sort of, you know, he sort of allowed people who'd come in for the ride, you know, cheap shares in this new thing that then was going to have a huge valuation because he suddenly said it was an AI company right.

So he's just, he's just this, he understands where the market's heading and he just gets there, you know, he invents a new idea that, realizing that you don't actually have to deliver in the short term for any of these ideas, but you can get flooded with capital and valuation. This is interesting as a business lesson, right? Like Adam Newman from Wework, I spent a month in a Wework, it was so weird. Because they gave away a free month. I was like, okay.

Yes. And then I quit at the end of the free month. Yes. But their whole thing at the time was they were rapidly expanding. And they were hugely valued and soft bank, in particular from Japan and invested all this money. Yes. Because Adam Newman had convinced everyone it wasn't a company that just sold office space. Yes.

It was a tech company doing some sort of networking, you know, reinventing life, really. And the structures we work in. But what Elon would have done is just gone, oh, you're. yeah, look, we work's a bit boring. I'm going to spin off the networking data side of this into, you know, Wii data or something like that. Yes. And just left everyone else behind and become a trillionaire, probably.

Yes, yeah, the problem with Adam Newman is that he didn't just keep on going. Yes, he needed to keep going. And which makes you think, Charles, how did we not spin the chaser off? Why didn't we start the shovel and the Boututa Advocate? Yes. And Stan. Why did we start Stan? You don't have to.

And YouTube. But if Elon Musk, you don't even have started them. What you do is you just take them over and then claim that you're the founder. Oh, like Tesla. Yeah. So anyway, so he's been constantly sort of shuffling the decks and shuffling the cards in this brilliant illusion, right, that gets to the point where he's now folded XAI, which is hugely valued because it's an AI company. Their words AI are right there.

Yeah. And Twitter and Star. and Starlink and SpaceX all into the one thing called SpaceX. Right. And it's going to be... So he's IPOing all those companies in a way. It's called SpaceX. Okay.

Right. But they're all part of the same thing. He's folded them all into the same company. And meanwhile, Tesla is actually struggling because, you know, they're not selling enough cyber trucks. But they're calling themselves a robotics company now. Like, he's lost interest in the fundamental idea of cars. But what SpaceX is,

did the other day was they bought a couple of hundred million dollars worth of cyber trucks from Tesla at full market value. To go and service all that, yeah. To prop up Tesla's value. So you can see how this whole thing is desperately shifty, right? So it's pump and not dump. Pump and not dumb. Pump and keep pumping and keep pumping and keep pumping and keep pumping. But the thing we know about all Ponzi's games is that essentially at some point, and let's be quite clear, this is not the same as a Bernie made of Ponzi scheme in that this is all being done very, very in plain sight. Like it is a Ponzi scheme, but it's got the full backing and the full force of the law. And in actual fact, a lot of the Trump administration are foundational investors in SpaceX.

They're going to make tens of millions of dollars out of SpaceX. In fact, everyone in Silicon Valley has a stake in this being sort of thing. But you're going, well, where is that money coming from? If everyone on that side of the ledger, if all of Elon's money, mates are going to make bank on this, where does the money come from? Well, Dom, the news is that it's coming from mum and dad investors. Oh, so I should definitely put my hundred bucks in. Yes.

Elon needs me. He needs a hundred bucks. Exactly. And also, I think that it would be rational if you were a bum and dad investor, even if you thought the whole thing was bullshit to buy in. Because what Elon Musk can do is promise you the full backing and full government backing of the properties of a pump and dumb scheme. Like, there will be market manipulation

to help you cash out at the right time if you're in the note. And the Saudis are in the win. Can I just quickly fact-checked that and we'll take some ads because I want to take a moment just to reiterate what you just taught me which had no idea about.

The Chaser Report, news a few days after it happens. So just to reiterate what Charles is saying, so he buys Twitter, calls it X. It was worth 44 billion. He's made it basically a hellscape. I can belittle. use it anymore and I was previously addicted.

It can't be worth more than 10 billion now. Oh no, I think it's worth like two billion. The good news is that in 2025, X was acquired by XAI. Now, of course, bearing in mind that the whole of GROC used to be owned by X. It's like a human centipede, isn't it? If it spat off. So he spat, he basically started GROC the AI thing within Twitter, then spun it off, taking all the value of a thing that it created.

Yes. Apparently not compensating them for it at all. Spun it off. And famously stole all the processes for XAI from Tesla. Yeah, and got the engineers to work on it. Yes. And then also got all the data from X to train GROC. Yes.

So it was. That was a phoenixing. But then sold, you managed to float XAI, made it worth a shitload more money because it's an AI company. Yes. And then it can buy its parent. Yes. And then exactly the same thing, as you say, this year has happened with SpaceX and XAI.

Yes. SpaceX is even sexier and more exciting. So guess what? It's bought X-A-I. So all you need to do is just basically steal the most exciting bit of your company. Yes. Spin it off, raise money through that and then buy the original. Which is why today I announce quantum chaser.

Oh, wow. Quantum comedy, right? We've talked about quantum computing before, but no one's done quantum comedy before. Because the art of comedy is to be unexpected. That's right, to be unexpected. Yes. And the thing is, Charles, it previously. And also, quantum comedy would also presumably be completely

un-understandable to most people. But also, Charles, you know, maybe about three people will get it. In the past, right, comedy's been either funny or not funny. Yeah. It's a binary, yes. But, well, yeah, binary, forget that. What this is, quantum comedy encompasses all of the spaces between very funny and not at all funny. At once. So it's all the jokes. It's all of the jokes at once in every direction. Yes. You can make an observation in every possible joke. development is developed at the same time. Yes.

And I mean, just think how quantum funny that would be. You know who will love this? Who? Chaz. True. Chaz would try and map with a tree. What all the different is possible?

He'll set up a TV show just to cover the quantum. So look, if you want to invest in quantum chaser, don't even get in touch if it's less than 10 mil. Oh, no, no, no. Yeah. When a 100. 10 bill, I think.

I think we're going to talk billions to get serious. But just email podcast at chaser.com. that are you. That's the official IPO email if you want to buy into Quantum Chaser. By the way, Charles, I know you and others have invested in the Chaser in the past. You'll get lots of money. Oh, great. But not nearly as much as I will get. That's fine by me. By doing this. All right. So there you go. Okay. So that's, that is really great news. But just to loop back to SpaceX, just to finish this yarn, which is the problem that I see, and it may not be even a short-term problem, it may even be a medium-term problem, is that Elon Musk's whole thing

is to always find the greater form, right? But the whole problem is, I feel like a $1.7 trillion company that's one of the biggest sort of top-10 biggest companies in the world, right? How do you scale up? How do you then find an even bigger company to take over that company when that company gets boring? I know what the answer to that is. What? Mars. You go to Mars. Mars. Mars X. The stock market, you just hope that there's another part of the universe where there are bigger companies. The greater fools. That can absorb SpaceX. That's option one.

That's option one. Option two, I think, is even more clear. Well, which is that there's a large pool of chumps called the American people. Oh, no, option two is going to be the quantum chaser buys out space X in a couple of weeks. I like that better. I think option two is actually more realistic. I know where you're going with this. Guess what?

The good old US government and the public. You know what I've heard, Charles? I've heard SpaceX is too important to allow to be privately held. You're right. So what it is is, is right, isn't it? So you're more used to Trump in the White House? Because the whole thing is already SpaceX has genuine geopolitical problems. Like, there was that Bob Woodwood book a couple of years ago, and it was about Elon Musk.

And part of the point that he made was how could we have let this guy get so powerful. Like people inside the CIA, we're going, he's now considered almost having a diplomatic role. He's kind of a rogue state. He can literally go, oh, Russia can get Stalin. Oh, shit. No, he does.

He has a huge impact on. He might not be interested in free speech and freedom of oppressed people. Yeah. But his products are enormously important. I mean, hasn't Ukraine's whole drone campaign relied on Starlink pretty much? Relied entirely on Starlink. And so he's got this geopolitical. role. So you can see a future where America goes, oh, you know what, or you know, or even just, like, for

example, the other day, the International Space Station had a leak in it, right? And they all had to shelter inside a SpaceX rocket that was docked to it. Now, I don't think the time, so that's, leak had been there for six years. I don't think the timing of that leak was unconcidental. I actually have a conspiracy theory, which is that they decided to do the, what? that to show the, show investors in SpaceX. Like Elon Musk rang up somebody high up in NASA or the government and went, why don't we fix that leak now? Put them in the SpaceX thing.

And it just shows how vividly important. Imagine the PR if that all die. But then also, the International Space Station is about to end its life, right? Like it's getting really old. Who's going to get the contract for that next space station? There's only one, like, NASA's not going to do it itself. It's going to be the government going, oh, you know what? We've got this hugely valuable client called SpaceX who can do it for us.

And then suddenly it becomes part of the American governmental system. And America essentially starts bailing out SpaceX, which is this failed rocket company. But then also, probably as part of the deal, Elon Musk gets extra, it's not even extraterritoriality. It's like extra planetary. So he gets a little, presumably he gets a little pod off the side of the National Space Station. It's entirely free of any earthly jurisdiction. He can just do whatever he wants. And that that would be his dream.

So maybe all we have to do is convince Elon Musk that, you know, he'd love it on Mars. And this whole problem will be solved. I'm actually thinking what we should do is say, just give him Mars. No, well, the good news is. But the thing is you've got to go there. As he moved to Texas, quantum chaser Charles has a rocket ready to go. Oh, okay. We're getting into rockets now.

I know it's got a rocket ready to go. It's nearly, it's not entirely explosion free, but for the right person. Well, it doesn't need to be. It doesn't need to be. No. So Elon, as you say, that's just data. He actually, he can have Mars. Yes.

He can own Mars. Yes. He just had to get on this rocket over here. Yeah. That will definitely blast him off to Mars, which he now owns. Yes. And no one can mess. He can have as many babies as he wants up there.

He can populate. It can be an entire planet full of Elon's descendants. Oh, my God. The rocket will definitely make it to Mars, all right? It's going to go very well. well. When has quantum chaser ever made a bad decision? Oh, and on Mars, he can have a Martian version of Twitter where he actually is funny.

Even quantum chaser, with its mastery of everything from very unfunny to funny. Can not make Elon Musk funny. We tried. Our only prototype was in the room for Saturday night live. There's absolutely no way to do it. That's brilliant. Isn't that sad? The world's first trillionaire.

The one thing you can't have is a laugh. ever with him rather than at him. Oh. No, I don't feel sorry for him. No, I'm not feeling sorry. We're part of the Iconiclass Network. Get you tomorrow.