Binance Pledges $500M to Help Elon Musk Take Over Twitter

Crypto exchange Binance has made a $500 million equity commitment to help finance Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter.

Binance Contributes to Twitter Takeover Deal

There’s an unlikely name on the list of Twitter’s new equity investors⁠—Binance.

According to an amended 13-D schedule filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday, crypto exchange Binance had the fourth-largest commitment among a dozen equity investors financing Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter. 

Binance pledged $500 million per the filing, while other institutions, including the Lawrence J. Ellison Revocable Trust, Sequoia, and VyCapital, invested $1 billion, $800 million, and $700 million, respectively. Commenting on the news on Twitter, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao called the exchange’s $500 million investment a “small contribution to the cause,” presumably in reference to Musk’s commitment to upholding free speech on the social media platform.  The aggregate value of the newly reported commitments totals around $7.139 billion, 16.225% of what Musk paid for Twitter.

In April, the co-founder and CEO of the electric car maker Tesla and the world’s richest person with an estimated net worth of around $268 billion, Elon Musk, acquired 100% of the social media giant Twitter at $54.20 per share in a deal worth approximately $44 billion. “Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it,” Musk said in the offering letter filed to the board chairman at Twitter, Bret Taylor. He also shared his belief that taking the company private was the only way to ensure Twitter could serve as a beacon of free speech.

According to the amended filing, Musk had decreased the aggregate principal amount of the margin loans secured against his Tesla stock from $12.5 billion to $6.25 billion and increased the equity financing commitments from $21 billion to $27.5 billion. The remaining funding is reportedly comprised of loans secured against Twitter assets.

The news seems to have only slightly moved the needle on BNB, with Binance’s token jumping 4.2% on the day. 

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this piece owned ETH and several other cryptocurrencies.