> Mansa Musa tipped so heavily he broke intercontinental trade dynamics
Thank you for dropping this fun fact. Pretty telling of my "western" education, I have never been taught anything about this guy. Quite memorable years of reign too!
Mechanically it doesn't work for two reasons: Elon's wealth is not liquid and him buying into the market would raise the price of gold far before he got anywhere near all of it.
But going further, I think you're misunderstanding my point - gold is a terrible measurement of wealth on the "human-history" time scale. At that scale, you have to consider monetary wealth as it relates to "the power to get things done" in general.
In that framing you can look at:
1. Power/wealth relative to the next most powerful people (like the Mansa Musa story). For pure wealth we often look at this in relation to country/global GDP.
2. Absolute ability to get "work" done, including technological changes.
3. Relative ability to get "work" done, adjusting for technological changes.
He's probably not close to top 10 in #1, because his relative power compared to the next most wealthy or powerful people is not that disparate, he just wields it more blatantly than we are used to in the modern era. For example, Augustus is believed to have personally controlled 6% of the world's wealth, not accounting for his power over the Roman Empire.
Elon is probably in the top 10 or so of #2, behind all modern US presidents, Putin, Xi, and maybe a few other world leaders. There's no doubting that his wealth could be converted into far more kW of work than at any other time in history as a result of technological leverage.
Much like #1, this is probably not close. The Ming Dynasty leaders, Augustus Caesar, Ghengis Khan, etc.
This is arguable in real terms.