coincodex.com
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has bought a 9.2% passive stake in social media giant Twitter and thus became the largest outside shareholder of the San Franciso-headquartered company, according to CNBC. Shortly after the investment was made public, the price of Dogecoin (DOGE), Musk’s favorite crypto, jumped to its multi-month high.
Key takeaways:
- According to an SEC filing, Musk now controls roughly 73.5 million shares of Twitter (TWTR). Given TWTR’s Friday closing market rate of $39.31, Musk’s 9.2% stake in the social media giant is worth $2.88 billion.
- The massive investment in Twitter comes less than two weeks after Musk publicly criticized Twitter for not abiding to free speech principles. At the time, the CEO also added that Twitter’s failure to “adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy. What should be done?”
- The price of Twitter stock exploded by 25% in the pre-market trading hours, reaching as high as $49.17. For context,
- While Musk has assumed a passive role in Twitter, this could change in the future. Dan Ives, a Wall Street tech analyst noted that the passive stake could be just the “start of broader conversations with the Twitter board/management that could ultimately lead to an active stake” and “more aggressive ownership role of Twitter”.
- Dogecoin, the memecoin that Musk had previously praised during his TIME’s 2021 Person of the Year interview, jumped by nearly 10% on the news, perhaps as a result of the DOGE community hoping for a potential Twitter integration.
- For context, Twitter added support for Bitcoin and Ethereum tips in recent months. Moreover, the social media giant recently introduced a feature that allows users to verify the ownership of NFTs they use as a profile picture.