Musk Owns Twitter: Let That Sink In
Elon Musk officially owns Twitter. The bot situation is already noticeably better.
On Wednesday, it became very clear that the Elon Musk/Twitter purchase had a high likelihood of happening. The man walked into Twitter HQ with a smile and a sink:
A judge had previously ordered the transaction finalized by this past Friday. Musk finalized the deal a day before the deadline and immediately fired former CEO Parag Agrawal “for cause” - a cold-blooded move as it means Agrawal can’t collect 8 figures in severance. I’d imagine litigation is likely coming there. Other reports have seen estimates for a 75% staff reduction at Twitter though those estimates have been refuted by Musk. There is almost no doubt more layoffs are coming though. Likely before Tuesday as to avoid stock grant triggers.
Buy Doge?
From a financial perspective, I don’t think anyone would try to make the case that Twitter has been a well run company since it’s IPO in 2013. Without question, Musk overpaid based on what the company is worth currently. Here’s a fun thread from Christopher Bloomstran detailing just how poorly shareholders have done since Twitter’s IPO:
Now that Twitter is private, we’ll never get the financial transparency from operations that we had when Twitter had to report quarterly earnings to the public. But, if you want to make a “bet” on Twitter going forward, it looks like the market thinks the best way to do that might be Dogecoin (DOGE) - I hate that I just typed that.
Show me on the chart where the “Dogefather” bought Twitter… If the $500 million equity stake in private-Twitter from Binance is any indication, Twitter is going to end up with some sort of crypto functionality. A mechanism that allows for self-custodial wallet integration and micro-payment rails would be absolutely awesome. A self-custodial wallet is unlikely, however, considering Binance is a centralized exchange and will likely want to be the custodian that controls Twitter app-native crypto wallets.
What bot problem?
This is purely anecdotal and you’ll unfortunately just have to take my word for it as I don’t have any data to back it up. But the bot situation on Twitter is already better. Specifically for crypto-focused content creators, Twitter has had a far superior user experience over the last few days. The top commenters don’t seem to be getting bombarded with scam links and fake FinTwit accounts the way they were earlier this month.
I can personally share that I was asked to verify my email address on Friday when I logged in. It likely wasn’t a blind stab at finding a bot either. Shortly after returning to Twitter, my account was frozen because I fell for a bad link in the replies and my account was briefly hacked and used for sharing additional scam links. Luckily, that issue was sorted out but my account was probably flagged as potentially being a spam account at that time. It’s obviously not a spam account, but it’s good to see the company getting serious about combatting the bot/spam problem.
Final thoughts
As I’ve been saying throughout most of this Musk/Twitter saga, I don’t really trust Elon Musk. But I trusted Twitter’s previous leadership even less. I’m personally excited to see what happens with that platform under Musk’s direction. Musk is a lot of things, but one thing he isn’t is afraid to think big. If Web3 ever becomes a real thing at scale, platforms like Twitter will have the most to lose unless they change dramatically. We’ll find out of Elon Musk is the person to drive that change. In the meantime, the user experience in the early hours since the leadership change is already noticeably better from where I sit.
No matter who controls Twitter, the platform works best when every user is allowed to say the jabs don’t work without fear of punishment.
Disclosure: I’m not an investment advisor. I merely share what I do and why I do it. You shouldn’t take anything I say as investment advice and always do your own research when making investment decisions. Cryptocurrencies, tokens, STONKs, and digital trinkets could all go to zero. I have no job and I live in my wife’s basement. I’m the last person on the face of the earth who you should listen to for financial advice or life advice. I do not own DOGE or any other dog-themed magic internet monies.