The chain of events leading up to Elon Musk’s $44 billion Twitter offer and acceptance feels like a well choreographed waltz by two billionaire bros.
Timeline
February 2020 Twitter’s biggest investor Elliot Management announces plans to oust co-founder Jack Dorsey as CEO. Something about him running two publicly traded company, yet also seemingly distracted with his personal life. Elon responds with:
Just want say that I support @Jack as Twitter CEO. He has a good ❤️.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 3, 2020
November 2021 Jack abruptly resigns as CEO.
December 2021 Jack renames Square to Block – to embrace cryptocurrency and the blockchain. Note he’s a Bitcoin Maximalist (someone that’s all in Bitcoin and believes all other coins are inferior).
March 2022 Elon takes a 9% stake in Twitter, becoming its largest outside shareholder.
April 10 2022 Elon turns down a seat on Twitter’s Board.
April 14 2022 Elon offers to buy Twitter for $44 billion to take it private in the name of free speech.
April 25 2022 Twitter accepts Elon’s offer. Jack tweets:
In principle, I don’t believe anyone should own or run Twitter. It wants to be a public good at a protocol level, not a company. Solving for the problem of it being a company however, Elon is the singular solution I trust. I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness.
— jack⚡️ (@jack) April 26, 2022
What We Know
Based on Elon’s tweets, this is what we know so far about his intentions of buying Twitter:
- He will take the company private.
- Make it a free speech platform.
- Create an edit button (apparently this is a big deal).
- Plans for an open-source algorithm “to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans.”
- Get rid of advertising and move to a subscription model. He even suggested Dogecoin (the meme coin that Elon supports) would be an acceptable form of payment for a Twitter subscription.
What We Don’t Know
…is everything else.
Will Jack be reinstated as CEO? Was this the plan all along? What are they masterminding for the future of crypto with both Twitter and Block?
How will free speech on Twitter really pan out in practice? What happens when extreme and potentially harmful views now have a platform?
Does Elon actually care or is he just gaining more traction to continue to troll the SEC?
The big question mark that’s really on the peripheral – is what is to become of the Web3 movement, whose ground 0 is on Twitter in the first place? Especially if Elon and Jack have both entirely brushed it off?
It’s somewhere between a and z
— jack⚡️ (@jack) December 21, 2021
Hint: “between a and z” is a jab at VC firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), who really is spearheading this movement.
You don’t own “web3.”
The VCs and their LPs do. It will never escape their incentives. It’s ultimately a centralized entity with a different label.
Know what you’re getting into…
— jack⚡️ (@jack) December 21, 2021
As mentioned, Jack is a Bitcoin Maximalist, so everything else is inferior, including Ethereum (where Web3 is built on), which he’s expressed his disdain for. It is ironic since his first tweet was sold as an NFT (on the ETH blockchain) for $2.9 million. What gives Jack?
This excerpt sums it up best:
“I think it’s actually the opposite: Ethereum hates Jack.
Ethereum is, ultimately, kryptonite for supercompanies such as Twitter, as well as Facebook and Google and any of the other massive, centralized public-owned platforms that most of us live on these days…which make their money by knowing as much about you, the user, as they can glean from the things you tweet, like and retweet.”
In a tweet storm, Chris Dixon (a16z VC partner) said:
“Web 3 startups begin to eat into the margins of Web 2 incumbents. The higher the take rate, the more vulnerable the incumbent… Social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok have take rates of 100% — they don’t share any revenue at all with creators! That’s been great for them but bad for users.”
So both sides are battling it out (with Elon on Jack’s side of course) and us bystanders are left to pick a side (or not). Both are your typical privileged, rich, white males in positions of power. It’s hard to find trust in either… What are their motives beyond money and power? Does Elon really care about democracy and freedom of speech? Is Jack really a hippie that believes Bitcoin will create world peace? Does Chris really care about reclaiming the power and value back to the people via Web3?
And so the plot thickens…