Tesla CEO Elon Musk has become the largest individual shareholder of Twitter.
The iconic tech mogul purchased a 9% stake in Twitter, Inc. to become the company's largest shareholder after previously raising questions about the company's adherence and dedication to the principle of free speech.
Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy.\n\nDo you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?— Elon Musk (@Elon Musk) 1648193692
Musk purchased 73.5 million shares valued at just under $3 billion, the Associated Press reported.
Musk’s ultimate aim with his newly obtained influence in the company is unclear, but in recent days he acknowledged that he was “giving serious thought” to building his own social media platform.
A regulatory report released after Musk’s purchase of the shares indicated that the billionaire’s investment is long-term and that he was looking to minimize his buying and shelling of shares.
In a note to investors, Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities said that he expects Musk’s considerable — albeit passive — stake in the company to be the first step in Musk acquiring more of the company so that he can exert his influence over it.
He said, “We would expect this passive stake as just the start of broader conversations with the Twitter board/management that could ultimately lead to an active stake and a potential more aggressive ownership role of Twitter.”
Aside from his purported dedication to free speech as a concept, Musk’s interest in Twitter could also be inspired by U.S. securities regulators restricting his ability to freely post his thoughts on Twitter.
In early March, Musk asked a federal judge to nullify a subpoena from SEC regulators and throw out a 2018 agreement that required Musk to have a third party prescreen his Tweets before posting them.
The Associated Press reported that Musk’s legal team is arguing that the SEC’s subpoena has “no basis in law” and that the SEC has used the court agreement “to trample on Mr. Musk’s First Amendment rights and to impose prior restraints on his speech.”
The SEC responded in a court motion arguing that it has the legal authority to subpoena Tesla and its leadership over Musk’s tweets.
Musk’s recent purchase of Twitter was celebrated among conservative figures online who have been highly critical of Twitter’s manipulative enforcement of its rules regarding speech.
Now that @ElonMusk is Twitter\u2019s largest shareholder, it\u2019s time to lift the political censorship.\n\nOh\u2026 and BRING BACK TRUMP!— Lauren Boebert (@Lauren Boebert) 1649074221
Elon Musk and like-minded, free speech supporting billionaires buying a controlling stake in Twitter is the only plausible "market-based" solution to censorship on the platform— Will Chamberlain (@Will Chamberlain) 1649078802
What if @elonmusk bought 9.2% in Twitter not to fix it, but rather to expose the insane ways the algorithm and activist employees have been manipulating us? (Shadowbans, de-bosting, reading our DM\u2019s, etc.)\n\nMaybe he can find out who at Twitter censored the Hunter Biden story?— Dave Rubin (@Dave Rubin) 1649074298
Twitter’s stock surged by 20% before the market opened on Monday as news of Musk’s acquisition broke.
Musk’s venture into social media comes as Truth Social, a social media outlet created and pushed by former President Donald Trump, saw the exodus of its joint chiefs of technology and product development, per CNBC.
Vitalik Buterin, the founder of the Ethereum Network, which houses the world’s second most popular cryptocurrency, Ethereum, is unfathomably wealthy and successful.
Despite his unprecedented success, the 28-year-old financial tech guru is not exactly optimistic about the future of cryptocurrency.
He told Time Magazine that “Crypto itself has a lot of dystopian potential if implemented wrong.”
Time reported that the Buterin’s creation, the Ethereum Network, is a trillion-dollar financial “ecosystem that rivals Visa in terms of the money it moves” and that “Ethereum has brought thousands of unbanked people around the world into financial systems, allowed capital to flow unencumbered across borders, and provided the infrastructure for entrepreneurs to build all sorts of new products.”
Buterin is worried that people who are overeager to invest their money in cryptocurrency underestimate the risks associated with doing so and expressed a general distaste for people who treat cryptocurrency as a sort of get-rich-quick scheme.
Referencing the infamous line of Bored Ape NFTs he said, “The peril is you have these $3 million monkeys and it becomes a different kind of gambling.”
Buterin also dislikes the glitz and glamor that often accompanies the newfound wealth by people who invest in cryptocurrency; he said, “There definitely are lots of people that are just buying yachts and Lambos.”
The encrypted blockchain technology that Ethereum runs on, like Bitcoin, gives Buterin hope that his creation will eventually become more than a financial asset.
Reportedly, Buterin hopes that “Ethereum will become the launchpad for all sorts of sociopolitical experimentation: fairer voting systems, urban planning, universal basic income, public-works projects” and more.
Most important to him however is a desire for Ethereum to serve as a “counterweight to authoritarian governments and to upend Silicon Valley’s stranglehold over our digital lives.”
Put simply, Buterin hopes to see his creation be used for more than financial investing.
He said, “If we don’t exercise our voice, the only things that get built are the things that are immediately profitable and those are often far from what’s actually the best for the world.”
Buterin’s vision, however, may not come to pass as he is far from the formal leader of the Ethereum Network.
In fact, the network was created so that there could be no central figure that directs its trajectory. It is a decentralized platform that is responsive to the whims of whoever is using it the most effectively.
This decentralization leaves Buterin trying to guide Ethereum’s legion of devotees by writing blog posts, giving interviews and speaking at conventions, and conducting independent research on blockchain technology.
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