Elon Musk: judge agrees with Twitter, for now

As previously reported, a Delaware court judge on Tuesday was expected to decide whether to grant Twitter’s request for an expedited trial in the case that sees the company facing Elon Musk. 

Twitter gets the better of Elon Musk

Musk would have liked to delay until 2023, but the judge agreed with Twitter, ruling that the trial will be held in October. It is expected to last five days. 

During this trial it will be decided whether the agreement to sell Twitter’s shares to Elon Musk is still valid or whether, as Musk would prefer, it is to be considered null and void because of his refusal to pursue the procedure. 

Some legal analysts argue that it is more likely that the judge will agree with Elon Musk. 

Therefore, the company’s first victory may mean nothing except that the timing will be relatively quick. 

The fact that Musk had asked for more time probably means that he would have liked to investigate further the issue of the true number of active users of the social network, which suggests that he may still be interested in the purchase. However, should the number of active users claimed by Twitter also include numerous fake or duplicate profiles, and many bots, the offered price of $54.2 a share might not be worthwhile. 

After all, Twitter is not a company that currently generates much income, when compared with its competitors, and this suggests that the figures it has always stated regarding the number of users may be overstated. 

For example, Musk himself now has more than a hundred million followers, but he suspects that a significant chunk are fake profiles or bots. As far as is known, he has not yet been able to determine how many there are among his followers either, because it is technically very difficult to be able to collect accurate data in this regard. 

Why Elon Musk withdrew his offer

To summarize, Musk accuses Twitter of providing him with bogus data on the basis of which he made his offer. Realizing that such data did not correspond to reality, he withdrew his offer. According to some analysts he may be interested in making another one at a much lower price. 

Last night Musk also reiterated his support for Dogecoin, responding to an official tweet announcing the launch of the new Dogecoin Core 1.14.6 software.

Upgrades!

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 21, 2022

It is worth mentioning that the price of DOGE did not react to this new statement. It actually had reacted in the minutes following the tweet, rising from $0.068 to $0.072, but then went back down. 

It has lost 4% in the last 24 hours, although it is 10 % higher than it was a week ago. It still remains 90% below the all-time high of May 2021, when Musk himself appeared on Saturday Night Live as the “Dogefather“.