On Monday (31 October 2022), BINANCE Co-Founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao (aka “CZ”) explained why his exchange had invested $500 million into Tesla and Space X CEO Elon Musk’s buyout of Twitter.
Late on Thursday (27 October 2022), Dogecoin fan Elon Musk completed his purchase of Twitter:
Elon Musk is now in charge at Twitter. I'm told former CEO @paraga and CFO @nedsegal have left the company's HQ and will not be returning as the Musk era begins.
— David Faber (@davidfaber) October 28, 2022
the bird is freed
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 28, 2022
A few hours after the purchase of Twitter was completed, CZ confirmed that Binance had sent $500 million to Elon Musk two days earlier:
Our intern says we wired the $500 million 2 days ago, probably just as I was being asked about Elon/Twitter. https://t.co/gM65GHUnZC
— CZ ?? Binance (@cz_binance) October 28, 2022
In a statement emailed to CoinDesk, CZ stated:
“We’re excited to be able to help Elon realize a new vision for Twitter. We aim to play a role in bringing social media and Web3 together in order to broaden the use and adoption of crypto and blockchain technology.“
CZ’s latest comments about Twitter were made during a conversation with Andrew Ross Sorkin on CNBC’s “Squawk Box”.
CZ told Sorkin:
“The deal was put together a few months back… and we haven’t changed our position. There are many reasons for supporting the deal. Twitter is a free speech platform, which is global, which is extremely important.
“We want to support strong entrepreneurs. Elon Musk is a very strong entrepreneur. Twitter is a tool that I use personally very heavily, and we want to make sure that crypto has a seat at the table when it comes to free speech. And there are more tactical things like we want to help bring Twitter into Web3 when they’re ready. And we want to help solve the immediate problems, like… charging for memberships, etc. That can be done very easily globally using cryptocurrencies as a means of payments.“
When asked to go into more detail with regard to the reasons for investing in Twitter, CZ said:
“I think Elon’s definitely one of the main factors, but the Twitter platform itself is very strong. I believe Twitter has not been monetized well. It has not been grown well. There’s many tactical problems, like the bots that spam my comments. There’s scammer accounts on there. It’s just not being run well. So, I think the platform has huge value itself. I can see it clearly myself, and especially now with Elon at the helm, we’re very confident.“
On October 28, Reuters reported that according to a Binance spokesperson the world’s largest crypto exchange by trading volume is “creating a team to work on how blockchain and crypto could be helpful to Twitter.”
