When the billionaire Tesla owner announced he would buy Twitter, many analysts in Brazil were concerned. I am not. I even told the Café da Manhã podcast, from Sheetwho was moderately optimistic.
After all, Twitter is a network infested with bots, fake accounts and sockpuppets. [perfis criados com identidade falsa]. Musk said in no uncertain terms that he would wipe out the malicious robots as well as authenticate the identity of each of the network’s users. If he did that, it would be a laudable experiment in closing disparities and reducing deception in the field of free speech. A simple and powerful idea: one person, one voice. Something that would be interesting to follow.
Cut to May 13, 2022. Musk announces that the Twitter purchase is “on hold”. The excuse used by him is that Twitter would not have been able to prove that the fake accounts would be “less than 5% of the platform”, apparently a condition for the business to go ahead.
Beyond the excuse, the reality is quite different. The fact is, the world has totally changed since Musk announced his proposal, revealing a brutal parsing error. Since the beginning of April, the Federal Reserve (US analogue to the Central Bank) has raised interest rates in that country. Subsequently, the stock market — and, above all, technology companies — collapsed. Tesla itself, which at the beginning of April was worth about $1,000 in shares, was trading close to $700 at the end of last week.
Tesla had also purchased $1.5 billion worth of bitcoins in 2021 and still carries the cryptocurrency in treasury. Bitcoin is another victim of depreciation, having shed up to 25% in value in just a few days.
In other words, Musk, at this point, must not be sleeping well. He promised to buy Twitter for $52.40 a share (totaling $44 billion). Price today considered absurd, since this Friday (13) the share value was around US$ 40. In other words, Musk’s offer is US$ 11 billion above the company’s market value.
It’s no accident that your fellow businessmen are either bouncing off the hook or reluctant to move on. If Musk backs down, there could be a deluge of lawsuits against him, including for stock market manipulation. The billionaire had also failed to comply with the law when he failed to announce at the right time that he was interested in acquiring the company.
In this context, Twitter, as a company, is progressively plunging into chaos. Several of the executives who lead it have been fired or have resigned. Musk himself has been making erratic statements about what he wants to do with the company. Between the lines, he could already tell that he believed that management would be much easier than it actually is.
At this point, everything indicates that the billionaire has entered a cold. It could be that the deal will go ahead, even if it is an economic disaster for Musk. In any case, this soap opera gradually reveals the limits and consequences that the pranks of a billionaire brat can cause.
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I have over 8 years of experience in the news industry. I have worked for various news websites and have also written for a few news agencies. I mostly cover healthcare news, but I am also interested in other topics such as politics, business, and entertainment. In my free time, I enjoy writing fiction and spending time with my family and friends.
