Binance Invests $500M in Elon Musk’s Twitter Acquisition

With Elon Musk taking over Twitter, Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, confirmed on October 28 that it was an equity investor in the billionaire’s $44 billion acquisition. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, commonly known as “CZ”, said on Twitter that Binance remitted about $500 million two days ago, which was the amount that Binance agreed to participate in the Twitter acquisition before.

“We’re excited to be able to help Elon realize a new vision for Twitter and 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,” Zhao said in an e-mailed statement to CoinDesk. “As a Web3 infrastructure company, we look forward to bringing new solutions to some of the problems inherent in the Web2 ecosystem,” a spokesperson for Binance told Jiemian News.

After April, Musk and Twitter engaged in a long tug-of-war. In May this year, Musk’s documents submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) showed that he had raised $7.14 billion for Twitter’s $44 billion offer at that time, among which investors included American computer technology company Oracle’s co-founder Larry Ellison, Binance, asset management company Fidelity and Brookfield, as well as Sequoia Capital and A16z. The largest $1 billion came from Ellison, while Sequoia Capital offered $800 million and A16z subscribed for $400 million. Binance contributed $500 million.

But the deal was halted as the sides could not agree on the terms of the deal. This month, however, Musk restated the offer and said that he planned to introduce new features to the platform, including making its algorithms open source, combatting spam accounts, and promoting free speech.

With the bumped acquisition process, Binance chose to support Musk’s decision. Zhao said in June that “if Musk leaves, we will leave.” Just two days before the acquisition was completed, Zhao reconfirmed his support for Musk at the Future Investment Initiative held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on October 25.

Musk walked into Twitter’s headquarters on October 26 with a big grin and a porcelain sink, subsequently tweeting “let that sink in.” He then changed his Twitter profile description to “Chief Twit.” With Musk’s successful acquisition of Twitter, Binance has also become a new shareholder of Twitter, which will be another attempt to expand its social influence after the investment of $200 million in Forbes. Zhao once said that he was looking forward to a new Twitter with more crypto features.

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Twitter revealed new developments in cryptocurrencies on October 28. It will partner with four NFT markets and will allow users to display, buy, and sell NFTs directly via Twitter. Twitter has previously allowed users to use Ethereum NFTs as profile pictures for their accounts.

In addition, Musk’s five-month acquisition of Twitter has been accompanied by layoffs. Reuters reported that Musk fired Twitter Chief Executive Parag Agrawal, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal and legal affairs and policy chief Vijaya Gadde. He had accused them of misleading him and Twitter investors over the number of fake accounts on the platform.