By
Chimamanda U. Martha
April 25th, 2024
Reports showed that Bankman-Fried was supposed to contribute to Musk’s project to buy Twitter. However, the FTX CEO did not become a part of it.
The CEO of popular crypto exchange FTX Sam Bankman-Fried is reportedly about to realize up to $100 million after Musk’s Twitter purchase. Sources revealed that Bankman-Fried may be cashing up to $100 million as he owned around $50 million to $100 million worth of stock in Twitter before the acquisition. After months of back and forth, Elon Musk finally paid $44 billion to take Twitter private on Thursday, 27th of October. The billionaire was forced to complete the deal after a Delaware judge gave him until the 28th of October.
FTX’s Bankman-Fried Set to Realize up to $100M from Musk’s Twitter Acquisition
With Musk paying $44 billion to own Twitter, Bankman-Fried now has about a 0.1% to 0.2% stake in the social networking company. Under Musk’s leadership, we should expect specific changes and restructuring. The new Twitter owner has already started leaving marks by firing CEO Parag Agrawal. Apart from Agrawal, chief financial officer Ned Segal was also forced to leave the company. Others affected are Twitter lawyer Sean Edgett, and Head of Legal Policy, Trust and Safety Vijaya Gadee. Before the dismissal, Musk had always blamed Gadee for being involved in Donald Trump’s ban from the platform. He also tweeted poop emojis to Agrawal, which got a lot of reactions at the time.
Also, there were rumors that Elon Musk will cue about 75% of all employees at Twitter once he gains ownership. However, a source revealed to Bloomberg that he told the staff that he had no such plans. Letting go of four top employees in a night is not quite the assurance the workforce were looking forward to.
Reports showed that Bankman-Fried was supposed to contribute to Musk’s project to buy Twitter. However, the FTX CEO did not become a part of it. A report stated that the exchange’s boss informed Musk of his intention not to continue with the support after a phone call between the two. Bankman-Fried was committed to investing as much as $15 billion to support Musk’s vision to buy Twitter. The details were revealed last month via a series of texts that went around.
SBF Did Not Contribute to Musk’s Twitter Buyout as Planned
After SBF declared his intention to contribute to the deal, his advisor Will MacAskill attempted to arrange a meeting between the exchange’s head and Musk. According to the texts, Musk was not sure Bankman-Fried could support his plan to take Twitter private. The billionaire asked the advisor if SBF had “huge amounts of money,” and MacAskill said he was worth around $24 billion. At the end of the say, Musk said he is avoiding having “a laborious blockchain debate.”
On the other hand, FTX competitor Binance is a confirmed investor in Twitter. The exchange committed $500 million in Musk’s buyout. CZ wrote on Twitter:
“Our intern says we wired the %500 million 2 days ago, probably just as I was being asked about Elon/Twitter.”
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