NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

I can imagine SpaceX choosing to self-finance a mission to the moon and beat NASA at it.

> I can imagine

That probably does require some imagination. Starting with any incentive to do so.

Elon just said starship will do the entire moon mission:

“Starship will end up doing the whole Moon mission. Mark my words.”

To address your question, what is the incentive for going to Mars

And he is super well known for making accurate predictions of the future.

Elon's predictions are usually very late, but they do happen. Falcon 9 landings, self driving vehicles, etc... Later than predicted, but they happened.