By Darren Parkin
Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has revealed it is a major investor in Elon Musk’s $44 billion takeover of social media platform Twitter.
The world’s richest person completed the acquisition last night before changing his Twitter profile to ‘Chief Twit’ and posting ‘the bird is free’.
However, the enormous sum hasn’t entirely come out of the Tesla chief’s own pocket. It is understood the $44bn was, in part, fronted up by several exclusive investors – one of them being Binance.
It is unclear yet how much Binance has participated, or what the intentions of its founder and CEO Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao are with Twitter, but he confirmed to Crypto AM that Binance was involved in the deal.
“We’re excited to be able to help Elon realise a new vision for Twitter,” he said.
“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.”
Changpeng Zhao has long been associated with the Elon Musk and the Twitter deal. Although figures of $500,000,000 have been previously mentioned.
Explaining Binance’s role in the takeover, Patrick Hillmann, Chief Strategy Officer, said the current bear market’s potential to impede widespread adoption of crypto had been overestimated.
“There is no bear or bull market for Web3, the tech that underlies crypto,” he said.
“Web3 will continue to grow as new practical use cases are being explored. As the world’s leading Web3 infrastructure company, we’re looking forward to bringing new solutions to solve some of the issues inherent in the Web2 ecosystem.”
A Binance spokesman added: “Our initial commitment remains the same and we look forward to exploring opportunities to grow the partnership in the future.
“Social media platforms have been a core feature of the Web2 space, allowing users to interact virtually and generate content with much ease. At Binance, we believe that Web3 may have an equally important role in the future of social media platforms, including Twitter. Web3’s focus on decentralization could help facilitate greater transparency, accountability, and freedom of expression for all users.
“Binance is creating an internal team to focus on ways that blockchain and crypto could be helpful to Twitter and actively brainstorming plans and strategies that could help Elon Musk realise his vision. For example, how can we build on-chain solutions to address some of Twitter’s issues, such as the proliferation of bot accounts in recent years? We are in the early stages now and still figuring out a plan.”
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