Elon Musk Just Tweeted a Life-Changing Decision, and …

Space travel is wild. Electric cars are neat. Crypto is cool. But if you really want to understand Elon Musk (he's the subject of my free e-book, Elon Musk Has Very Big Plans, by the way, download here), I'd look to a specific tweet from 24 days ago.

Most ofMusk'sTwitterpostsdrown in engagement, but not this one; itfloated in relative obscurity until people finally began to connect the dots.

Here's the tweet, fromJune 9, in whichMusk described where and how, exactly, he's decided to live:

My primary home is literally a ~$50k house in Boca Chica / Starbase that I rent from SpaceX. It's kinda awesome though.

Only house I own is the events house in the Bay Area. If I sold it, the house would see less use, unless bought by a big family, which might happen some day.

(To set the context, Musk was replying to a Twitter user who had praised him for using "less resources than most multi-millionaires despite working way harder.")

By Musk's standards--he routinely posts things that get 100,000 or more likes--this was pretty low Twitterengagement. Most ofthe replies were about whether he really does live modestly compared to other ultra-wealthy people.

But it wasn't until recently that people started to ask:Wait, tell us a little more about this $50,000 house?

My friends, I think that is the bigger story.

It turns out, Musk is almost certainlyliving ina 380-square-foot, tiny,foldable house-in-a-box, which was manufactured by acompany called Boxabl, delivered to the SpaceX launch facility in Boca Chica, TX on a flatbed truck, and set up on-site in less than a day.

The secret was hiding in plain sight, actually, given that Boxabl posted a YouTube video last November that offered a tour.

Boxabl co-founder Galiano Tiramaniexplained in the video how the housewas built and transported--and teased that it had been delivered for the use of "a top-secret customer" located in (you guessed it): Boca Chica, Texas.

I'veembedded the video at the end of this column.You'll note that Tiramanisits next to a giant poster of a SpaceX rocket inside the tiny homewhile he talks about his "top-secret customer," so this didn't exactly require Sherlock Holmes levels of deductive reasoning.

Now, the big question is what kind of kind of investment Musk or Tesla might have madein Boxabl. It's a private company, and so far they're not saying.

And of course, I can't vouch for Boxablespecifically. It'sa startup that I hadn't heard of until Musk subtly spilled the beans, and it surely faceshuge manufacturing, distribution, and even marketing problems.

(Musktweeted back in May,before anyone seems to have connected the dots about his housing situation: "Prototypes are easy, production is hard." Giramani retweeted him.)

Now, of course, there's a certain quirkiness to this story that makes it fun.But consider: mass-produced, foldable housing withcomponents that can fit current standard shipping containers?

That's a big idea.In fact, it'squite possibly evenbigger than electric cars and space travel, at least during our lifetimes.

We live in an era in whichhousing affordability is a huge and growing problem almost everywhere--and then we find out that Musk, with a reported net worth as I write this of $167.7 billion--literally lays his head at night inside the prototype for a possible home of the future?

It could be a life-changing idea for a lot of people if it ever really took off.

Now, if only we can get Musk to revisit his idea of super-quiet leaf blowers.

Here's the video tour of Musk's house.Don't forget the free ebook, Elon Musk Has Very Big Plans, which you can download here.

The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

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Elon Musk Just Tweeted a Life-Changing Decision, and ...