Elon Musk gets Back-up from Silicon Valley Investors and Binance as Top up for the Twitter Bid
Twitter bid Investors
On 14th April 2020, Elon Musk offered to buy Twitter; the Twitter board accepted the offer at $ 44 billion. Elon Musk had to sell shares worth 9.6 Million to Tesla to acquire the company. Days after this iconic purchase, the billionaire has continued to receive offers from investors who are billionaires and tech heavyweights from Silicon Valley and other parts of the world to fund his deal.
Before the purchase, Elon Musk had stated his plans to take the social media company private, saying that “free speech was the bedrock of functioning and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated. I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans” he further added that Twitter had tremendous potential, and he looked forward to working with the company and community of uses to unlock it.”
Elon Musk is a frequent user of Twitter. Musk said in his tweets that there was a need for Twitter to go private as it served as the de facto public town square and hence failed to adhere to free speech principles, fundamentally undermining democracy. Does this mean the investors share their sentiments and vision on free speech?
Well, it could be. One of the most recent investors, Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange platform in the world, plans to invest $500 million in equity funding. This move has invoked curiosity in many crypto enthusiasts and investors.
In a recent interview with CNBC, Changpeng Zhao, Binance CEO and Founder who is a firm believer in the crypto world vision of a new kind of technology called Web3 said, “We are excited to help Elon realise his vision for Twitter. We are hoping to play a role in bringing social media and Web3 together and broaden the use and adoption of crypto and blockchain technology,” Binance is the largest cryptocurrency trading platform in the world. It supports over 500 Cryptocurrencies in more than 180 countries.
A Binance-owned stake in Twitter could be a win-win opportunity for Elon Musk and Binance on the decentralised ideals, with Binance realising the Web3 decentralised ideals. Web3 is an idea for a new iteration of the World Wide Web-based blockchain technology, which incorporates decentralisation and token-based economics concepts.
Other investors include Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, co-founders of Andreessen Horowitz. The company has contributed $400 Million to the Twitter deal. Marc Andreessen is a re-known free speech enthusiast and backer of crypto technologies, and Larry Ellison, a co-founder of Oracle, is investing $1 billion.
As part of his intention to woo more investors on Twitter, Elon told investors he would double the number of users on the platform to more than half a billion. He will double Twitter’s revenue by 2025 and bring millions of paying subscribers to the platform. Other add-ons include him being Chief Executive, at least for some time, and lastly, the investors will make a handsome return if they agree to invest. We can only hope that as more and more investors line up to invest, Elon Musk’s Vision for Twitter is a platform where free speech will be actualised.
