It’s more money than most of us can ever even comprehend – $70 billion could buy you a few private islands, a super yacht (or two), expensive art and probably a lot more.
So imagine having that cash and then casually losing it all in the space of a few days.
That’s exactly what happened to Japanese billionaire businessman Masayoshi Son, who is the founder and chief executive of telecommunications and investment giant SoftBank Group.
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Rewind the clock back to the turn of the 21st century, and at one point, his net worth was reported to be rising at '$10 billion per week', meaning he was richer than Microsoft founder Bill Gates for a brief period.
And we aren’t exaggerating when we say brief.
Just as he and his net worth were climbing the corporate cash ladder, the dot-com bubble popped, sending his company’s share values plummeting.
In the late 90s, the dot-come bubble was when people were betting big on online businesses - then it burst, after a large number of companies failed to ever become profitable and burnt up all their investors' cash.
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It saw people heavily investing in internet start-ups, amongst other things, but collapsed in 2000 leading to a number of tech companies having to declare bankruptcy.
For Masayoshi Son, it meant his personal net worth dropped by $70 billion, a figure cited as reportedly the greatest financial loss a single individual has experienced financially at that time period.
For context, The Guardian reported early in 2023 that Tesla boss and billionaire Elon Musk was rumoured to have lost $182bn (around £150bn) since November 2021.
A Guinness World Records report said it meant he breaks the record for the largest loss of personal fortune in history, the publication said.
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But back to Masayoshi Son, who admitted the loss in the dot-com bubble meant he could only claim to be as rich as Bill Gates for a mere three days!
Speaking on The David Rubenstein Show in his Peer-to-Peer Conversations series in 2017, the businessman said: “My personal net worth was increasing by $10 billion by per week."
"Then I became richer than Bill Gates. Before I talked to anyone else, our stock started crashing. So six months after that our share price went down 99%."
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But don’t worry – he’s still a billionaire today so he managed to survive that challenging financial period.
“We almost went bankrupt and somehow I survived,” he told David Rubenstein.
He went on to invest in companies like Vodafone, who were less of a risk and said: “That time I said 'now is the time to go to the next stage', which is the internet will become mobile internet.
"So, I had to go get the license of the government for the Spectrum or acquire Vodafone Japan."
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The only hitch was that he needed $20 billion to buy Vodafone Japan, but only had $2 billion in his bank account.
Asked how he raised the capital he needed, he told Rubenstein: "I convinced the bank that I can turn around Vodafone Japan and it will become successful with great cash flow.
"They believed me and lent me money."
In the years since the dot-com disaster, he has made big acquisitions in the form of London based company ARM, which designs computer chips for tablets and smartphones, for some $32 billion in 2016.
He came under fire after SoftBank’s Vision Fund investment arm had to recently make job cuts after profit losses.
He was quoted as saying: “I am ashamed of myself for being so elated by big profits in the past."
According to Forbes, his real time net worth in 2023 is estimated at around $22.1 billion and he currently sits in 79th position on their ‘real-time billionaire list’.
The Forbes list has Elon Musk in first place with a net worth estimated at $245.3 billion.