Sam Bankman-Fried believed that FTX had nothing to contribute that was complementary to Elon Musk’s vision for Twitter.
On Thursday, FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) explained his choice not to invest in Twitter at the Forbes Iconoclast Summit.
Even though he was enthusiastic about Elon Musk’s goals, the young millionaire thought his firm could not significantly contribute to their realisation.
Nothing to Provide:
As SBF said on Twitter on Thursday, his company’s strengths didn’t seem to be “what was needed for Elon’s vision for Twitter.” Musk was uninterested in developing a blockchain-based payment system, which FTX would have otherwise aided with.
This week, Dogecoin surged when Elon hinted at a potential Dogecoin payment mechanism for Twitter. Similarly, when new allegations appeared on Thursday that Twitter’s plans for a crypto wallet had been shelved, the memecoin dropped by 8%.
SBF stressed that Musk’s reorganisation of Twitter’s board was an essential step, and he’s eager to see Musk implement his vision for the site.
“I think there is a tonne of upside in what he’s doing,” he said at the Forbes conference. “It’s not exactly the same as what my vision would be. That’s okay – it doesn’t have to be.”
SBF said that, despite his excitement, he did not feel his vision for Twitter was “complementary” to Musk’s, hence he did not participate. “He has his vision, therefore he should be the one to implement it,” he remarked.
Prior to Musk’s purchase of Twitter, SBF and a handful of other crypto heavyweights were in communication with him. Some crypto Twitter users pointed out that these communications showed Musk rejecting SBF’s offer to endorse the transaction, rather than vice versa.
But the CEO says that FTX didn’t help because they chose to and that the court records “were, for some reason, missing some messages.”
Twitter And The Binance Exchange:
While FTX chose to keep out of the way, Binance immediately supported Musk’s attempt to acquire Twitter with $500 million.
Binance was drawn to Musk’s offer, according to the exchange’s CEO, Changpeng Zhao, because of his vision for free expression and the opportunity to give crypto “a seat at the table” in repairing the platform.
“I believe Twitter has not been monetized well, it has not grown well, there are many tactical problems like bots that spam my comments, there are scammer accounts on there,” he said on Monday.
