Major crypto exchange Binance has put half a billion US dollars towards Tesla chief Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover.
Responding to reports about the exchange possibly still backing the much-discussed Twitter deal, Binance CEO Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao tweeted today (UTC time):
“Our intern says we wired the $500 million 2 days ago, probably just as I was being asked about Elon/Twitter.”
CZ was referring to a question asked in Saudi Arabia, where he was attending a conference, about whether he’d stand by the financial commitment to Musk.
According to Bloomberg’s report on Tuesday, the CEO replied,
“I think so.”
CZ further commented on the deal in his tweets on Thursday, with some well-known players in the industry supporting the deal as well, such as crypto-asset trader and Blockroots founder Josh Rager.
“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.”
Binance said back in May that it would commit this amount of money to Musk’s $44 billion buyout of Twitter.
As of Thursday, the deal has now officially gone through and Elon Musk tweeted a video of himself entering Twitter headquarters on October 26.
On October 27, in a letter to advertisers, Musk said that he acquired Twitter to “help humanity.” “It is important for the future of civilization to have a common digital town square,” he said.
Social media currently is in danger of going either far right or far left, creating more division in society, Musk argued.
Today he added:
Meanwhile, as Bloomberg reported, US President Joe Biden’s administration officials have been discussing whether the country should subject some of Musk’s ventures to national security reviews, including the Twitter deal.
The report quoted Gregory Lafitte, who heads merger arbitrage trading at Tradition Securities and Futures, as saying
“Some US officials may be concerned about foreign investors backing Musk’s bid, including Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia, Binance — a digital-asset exchange founded and run by a Chinese native — and Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund.”
In September, CZ, who is a Chinese native, said that Binance is not a Chinese company.
