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You're not factoring in the "He's the guy that crashed a plane!" impact on all his future earnings.

He was speculating to accumulate.

Waiting on the easy money, selling the movie rights to Netflix.

It depends a lot on the genre. Some pay $3-5 CPM I believe (so, $3k-5k per million). And that's just the youtube ads; once a channel gets a lot of subscribers they can attract external sponsors as well.

There used to be a sponsoring segment in the beginning, but, if I recall correctly, they ended the contract after the stunt became known and it was cut.

Affiliate link, not a sponsor. It's a common ruse by YouTubers to refer to them as sponsors to suggest that there's a negotiated commercial relationship when there isn't.

And YouTube is one of the highest paying platforms.

https://twitter.com/MrBeast/status/1484616451281588227

Ah, yeah back in the early days of youtube 1.5+ million views was a huge amount of revenue for creators.