Since the deal’s completion on October 28, multiple aspects concerning Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter have been revealed online. These include some plans for content moderation, other parties interested in the deal, and much more.
A trove of messages published as part of the legal battle over Elon Musk’s attempt to cancel his acquisition of Twitter has revealed desperate efforts to pull the $44 billion transaction together with assistance from a cast of high-profile Silicon Valley allies.
Hundreds of messages between Musk and his associates from the beginning of 2022 showed the billionaire entrepreneur had conversations with Twitter’s management and board, his Morgan Stanley advisors, potential investors like FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, and unanticipated backers like podcaster Joe Rogan.
Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of crypto exchange FTX, expressed early interest in investing in Twitter when Musk purchased a large share in the company in March of this year. He has also expressed interest in using blockchain on Twitter.
An advisor to Sam Bankman-Fried, Will MacAskill, texted Musk on behalf of SBF, writing, “I’m not sure if this is what’s on your mind, but my collaborator Sam Bankman-Fried has for a while been potentially interested in purchasing it and then making it better for the world.”
In Musk’s reply, he questioned whether SBF holds the huge amount of funds that are required for the deal, to which MacAskill stated that Sam Bankman-Fried was worth an astounding $24 billion and was willing to invest somewhere between $8 billion and $15 billion over the Twitter Deal.
Some other senior executives from the crypto and banking area, FTX, also contacted Musk to see if he could find common ground with SBF, who had a grand vision for blockchain and social media integration.
Musk, however, rejected the suggestion and said that he was not interested in engaging in a “laborious blockchain debate” with SBF.
While speaking to a banker from Morgan Stanley Musk explained:
“Blockchain Twitter isn’t possible, as the bandwidth and latency requirements cannot be supported by a peer-to-peer network, unless those ‘peers’ are absolutely gigantic, thus defeating the purpose of a decentralized network”.
Building social media platforms on top of blockchain technologies has attracted the interest of countless leaders. They think blockchain will promote data democratization. But thus far, not enough has been done in this direction.
