Binance put $500 million towards the Twitter project. The money was described by Binance’s CEO as a “blank check” and he said he didn’t discuss a business plan with Musk
Binance CEO Says $500 Million Investment Is A Blank Check
Binance, a cryptocurrency exchange, put $500 million towards the project. The money was described by Binance’s CEO as a “blank check,” and he said he didn’t discuss a business plan with Musk.
As part of Elon Musk’s arrangement to take Twitter private, Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, is spending $500 million.
CEO Changpeng Zhao told the Financial Times on Thursday that the amount is basically a blank check. Zhao made the decision to invest half a billion dollars in the purchase without even hearing Musk’s business strategy, he added.
“We, from our friends, heard that [Musk] was looking for third party investors, and are we interested?” he recounted to the British newspaper. “We immediately said that we are. He didn’t have a plan for Twitter. There isn’t, like, a business plan. So it wasn’t that type of discussion.”
According to the Financial Times, Zhao stated that Binance will back Musk regardless of how he uses the funds and that he is particularly thrilled about the possibility of a cryptocurrency tie-in with Twitter.
“It’s more of a blank check,” Zhao told the outlet. “After the investment…Elon will figure out what he wants to do, and we’ll be supportive of that.”
Elon Musk Also Cares About Twitter Economy
While Musk has mentioned a few alternatives for improvements to Twitter, such as taxing government and business users, removing bot accounts, and loosening content control (Musk calls himself a liberal free speech absolutist), there hasn’t been any public discussion of an overall plan.
Despite Musk’s claim at a TED conference in April that he doesn’t care about Twitter’s economics, Bloomberg claimed that he offered numerous tactics for bolstering the social network’s finances in meetings with bankers.
Musk informed potential investors that their money would be doubled or tripled and that he could quickly grow Twitter’s user base to 500 million.
According to regulatory documents released on Thursday, Musk has 18 backers, including Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, venture capital company Sequoia Capital, and Fidelity, who have combined committed $7.1 billion.
Musk previously stated that he obtained the $44 billion required to purchase Twitter using loans from seven banks, a loan against his Tesla stock, and his personal funds.
Musk told the Securities and Exchange Commission that the new investors will allow him to borrow less money from banks.
