Not Only Elon Musk, But FTX Boss Sam Bankman-Fried.

Sam Bankman-Fried, was once interested in buying Twitter Inc. (photo: doc. wsj)

JAKARTA Apparently not only Elon Musk is interested in buying Twitter. The crypto billionaire and exchange CEO of FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, is reportedly also interested to acquire the social network in March 2022. This was first reported by Business Insider.

In an article published on September 29, journalists refer to private texts released amid court battles between Musk and Twitter, which have eased after the entrepreneur suspended acquisition negotiations in July.

According to the report, in March, a philosophy and close adviser of Bankman-Fried, Will MacAskill sent an SMS to Musk and cited a possible joint effort to buy the social network.

I'm not sure if this is what's on your mind, but my collaborator Sam Bankman-Fried has long been interested in buying it and then making it better for the world. If you want to talk to him about a possible joint effort in that direction," MacAskill text message to Musk, quoted by Cointelegraph.

In response, Musk asked if Bankman-Fried had "a large amount of money," and MacAskill claimed that the SBF was worth USD 24 billion (IDR 367.2 trillion) and was ready to spend USD 8 billion (IDR 122.4 trillion) up to USD 15 billion (IDR 229.5 trillion) for the acquisition.

Then, last April, MacAskill discussed financing with Morgan Stanley's head of global technology investment banking, Michael Grimes. The latter he informed Musk that crypto entrepreneurs could provide $5 billion to seal the deal. But Musk did not show significant interest and noted that he did not want to "debate about a tiring blockchain" with the SBF.

These personal negotiations don't seem to end at all, as both Bankman-Fried personally and FTX doesn't appear on the list of co-investor candidates, which include entities such as Binance, Andreessen Horowitz, Fidelity, and Sequoia Capital.

In the last known text message between Musk and Bankman-Fried on May 5, the first one asked, "Sorry, who sent this message?"

Justifying his decision to come out of the deal, Musk accused Twitter of hiding the true number of fake accounts / bots, which in his estimate exceeds 5% of daily active users monetizable. The first hearing of Twitter's lawsuit will be held on October 17. Twitter wants to force Musk to complete the legal acquisition.