You're supposedly smart, creative people... so I'll ask you this:

What's the fastest way to make 100 million USD (or similar/greater amount in any other currency), with as little capital as possible?

It doesn't really matter to me if it's legal or not. I've just been thinking about it and my imagination fails to come up with anything better than robbing banks or creating charity organizations to steal money from: basic stuff.

How difficult it is to actually achieve is less important than speed. However, the easier it is to do the better idea it is. Luck should also be minimized as a factor.

Another rule is that the money should be immediately accessible. So getting 100 million worth of gold or something does not count unless you have someone who would buy it from you. Also if you steal the money you would probably not be able to use it right away.

I'm just asking this as a thought exercise, so refrain from calling the authorities on me or whatever.

The easiest, fastest and most economical way to get $1m USD is to print it yourself. I would stick with $20 and lower denominations. The printed bill's value is intrinsic in it's visible appearance only since the USD is backed in faith only (that's the real reason it says "In God We Trust") since we dropped the gold standard a ways back.

If you have a $5 bill in your hand and someone is willing to give you $5 worth of goods for it, then the bill is valued at $5, regardless of who or where it was printed. In my opinion it's no different than me trading you $5 worth of my apples for $5 worth of your oranges.

Depends a lot on your skills to begin with. I just saw an episode of Breaking Bad. "Breaking Bad is the story of Walter White (Bryan Cranston), a struggling high school chemistry teacher who is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer at the beginning of the series. He breaks down and turns to a life of crime, producing and selling methamphetamine with his former student Jesse Pinkman"

Lots of money in those kinds of drugs but it takes a lot of knowledge and a lot of cynicism to get rich that way.

Who needs money anyway?

Do what other people who managed to make that much did. If you can create the next google, facebook, etc... then that money and more will be yours.

that is the modern phenomona.. given they have no concept of the a**hole side of things like defense and U.S. sovereignty.... it proves it is a local culture with big money. "California dreamin" as they say in new england, ya know the place that invented the computer.

I was reading about a jamaican named "mr.Coke" (his real name) declared by the u.s. as a notorius drug kingpin. For america to say that, well, that could be a 100million right there.

FDA and its approvals is 100million per retareded hippy drug...

Gov't approvals on the worst of cars brings in 100million...where is that plastic saturn...

hmmm. Gov't, unethical, euphoria...put those together and you too can have 100million.

"eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die"

To print 100m USD would take a lot of time, a lot of effort, and a lot of capital. You can't just use your home printer to do this, nor can you print it on normal paper. The fake money is not immediately accessible because you can't use it in bulk. Fake money would never be that perfect and laundering the money is incredibly risky. You didn't provide solutions to do that in the scale that would be needed.

Drugs are always a solid choice, but the real world is a bit different from that of Breaking Bad. It's not that easy to make the necessary connections. You'd need to know the biggest players to be able to move enough of the product. How would one achieve that? Also the worshiping of the quality of the drug and the teacher's abilities is not very realistic imo - most people just wouldn't care, especially the "industry leaders".

Creating the next Google... Sure you could do that but that's not a very practical answer. It's a bit like saying "just work for it". How exactly does one create the next Google, and what would that look like?

You can become some kind of sports star. In Europe, you can make 100.000 € a week playing soccer. The initial investment is a soccer ball.

Here are some examples : http://www.soccer-training-info.com/soccer_players_weekly_salaries.asp
top of the list : Cristiano Ronaldo at Real Madrid: $298,548/week
bottom of the list : Clint Dempsey at Fulham: $58,334/week

Best part is : it all legal . If you make "just" 100.000$/week, it should take you about 5 years to reach your goal.

Yes, and the best part is how easy it is. After all, training is for the untalented. You'd still have to bother to show up for the games though. I guess it'd help if you actually liked the sport you're playing...

The old fashioned way - print it!

Seriously it really doesn't explode very often.

For playing soccer you need years of training, the ball alone won't cut it.

Kill Bin Laden four times. I think the reward is $25M.

I promise you one thing. No one is going to make any money hanging out in the Off Topic section of this forum.

Wanna bet.

If you live in the USA, here is a way to make 100 M$, but it may take several years:
1. forecast what technologies are going to be used by Microsoft, Apple or another giant with very deep pockets in their next top-selling products.
2. if they didn't already patent the stuff, you patent it and build some working hardware / software prototype that you can show in public before them.
3. hire a patent law firm, that would agree to take your case against the giant, for 75% of the case revenue.
4. when the giant launches their new hot product, legally notify them of patent infringement, which they will initially dismiss.
5. sue them for >400 M$ (of which 300 M$ are going to the law firm) and wait for a settlement.
There is no guarantee that this would actually work, but it was my plan to make XX M$. Unfortunately for me, I don't live in the USA...

I've developed a unique and very efficient way to make $$$, which I'm sure could be applied to satisfy your query.


The easiest way that I have found to make such large amounts of money is like so:

1) Hold down Shift
2) press 4 ($)
3) Now press 1
4) and then press 0 6 times.

Congratulations, you now have $1000000!!!

I think that's a cheat code for Sim City or something. Doesn't work in real life.

Waste of time.. could've made a few million already by now..

um... surveys for life?

The hundred million dollar question! The next google will not be a google. Google is not the 'next' altavista, it is just... google =)

You have to think of a problem, then an ingenious solution. Trouble is, there are problems that exist that you don't even know about yet.

I'd start by watching this http://www.slideshare.net/jbrenman/the- ... rk-2361479

Drugs... if you could work for someone and make 100 mill, don't you think there are plenty of other people (who are already criminals) who would want to do it too? And not hesitate to kill (or worse, maim) you if you got in their way? I mean, two cops were just shot & wounded (and their dog shot&killed) in our little old country (New Zealand) who just happened to be near a house, smelt cannabis, and decided to investigate. In a city of 400,000! We can debate whether drugs are bad, but what they lead to is terrible. Plus, how do you find a hundred thousand people who wanna buy your drugs for $1,000 each (assuming you get your product for free by killing a kingpin )

Printing money - you wanna know how much capital outlay you need to make money that looks even vaguely real? There's been plenty of docos on it, try watching. To give you an idea, there was one on a guy that counterfieted casino coins (not even real money). He got the size, shape, weight, everything perfect. The machine still rejected the coins. He found out that the real coins made a different pitched sound when dropped than his fake ones, and that's how the machines knew to spit them out. He had to send the real coin off for testing (bloody sketchy in itself, since it turned out it was a special alloy only used for that purpose, i.e. why are you getting it tested!), and then somehow source a whole bunch of that alloy (he ended up going with something 'close enough'. He got found out anyway...

Here's a real bout of rain for your parade - do some reading on philosophy on Wikipedia (or elsewhere), you'll realise that you can never truly know for sure that you do have 100 million dollars. Hmm, can of worms

Tzupy's idea is best. I heard a story about a guy in NZ... we had a "super 12" in rugby... (cos of the 12 teams participating). He copyrighted the names super 13, super 14, etc.... Sure enough they added 2 more teams on, then bought the name 'super 14' off him!

Move to an Eastern European country with Russian ties that has yet to be fully exploited by the West (Belarus, let's say). Pretend to become a popular pro-Western political opposition leader. Maybe stage a fake rally by giving a few people $10 to work as extras, and send the video to Western news sources. (Note: keep your profile as low as possible in the actual Eastern European country.) Arrange a meeting with the US government (ideally, during a Republican administration, but take what you can get) and get money for your "upcoming political campaign" to topple the pro-Russian government. Pocket the cash and flee from the CIA for the rest of your life.