Texts reveal FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried considered partnering with Elon Musk on Twitter deal

In April, Sam Bankman-Fried and Elon Musk exchanged several messages. In one of them, Bankman-Fried shared a message about how blockchain could be integrated with Twitter.

According to text messages revealed in Elon Musk’s lawsuit against Twitter, Sam Bankman-Fried has reportedly been considering buying the platform “for a while“. Additional reports claimed that William MacAskill, an advisor and member of the SBF-funded FTX Future Fund, had attempted to arrange a meeting between Musk and the FTX CEO last March to discuss the possibility of the two doing a “joint effort” to buy Twitter.

Full log of the Elon Musk texts released in Twitter v. Musk today: https://t.co/9m4yS3apBx

– kate conger (@kateconger) September 29, 2022

According to the exhibits of the SMS published online by Kate CongerNew York Times reporter William MacAskill said that Sam Bankman-Fried was willing to contribute $8 billion to $15 billion to the acquisition of Twitter.

A bunch of Elon Musk’s text messages hit the docket today in Twitter v. Musk. Most of them identify sender & recipient, but this one, apparently about reinstating Trump, does not. pic.twitter.com/GqOWBsYDJE

– kate conger (@kateconger) September 29, 2022

However, Michael Grimes, head of investment bank Global Technology, later told Musk that Bankman-Fried was only willing to give $5 billion for a joint Web2 split.

Jack Dorsey organized a last ditch meeting on 4/26 between Elon and Parag Agrawal. It apparently did not go well: Jack vouches for Parag before the meeting, then says afterwards that it’s clear Elon can’t work with Parag. pic.twitter.com/ZUgcIjKaks

– kate conger (@kateconger) September 29, 2022

Michael Grimes reportedly praised Sam Bankman-Fried to the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, describing SBF as a “hyper genius and a stock builder“.

Will MacAskill, who describes himself as a “altruist” and professor of philosophy at Oxford University, first sent a message to Musk about SBF’s interest in Twitter when Musk began buying Twitter stock and posting his displeasure with the social media platform’s censorship practices in March.

Referring to a poll Musk tweeted about Twitter policy and free speech, MacAskill sent a message to Musk on March 29, writing, “I don’t know if this is what you’re concerned about, but my collaborator Sam Bankman-Fried has for some time been potentially interested in buying this tool and then improving it for the world.”

Sam Bankman-Fried’s contact was suggested by Will MacAskill, who advised Elon Musk to contact him if he was considering “a possible cooperative effort in this area.“

In his response, Musk reportedly asked if Bankman-Fried possessed “huge amounts of money“. MacAskill later responded that SBF had a fortune of about $24 billion at the time and might be willing to provide $8 billion to $15 billion in financing.

In April, Bankman-Fried and Musk exchanged several messages. In one, Bankman-Fried shared a message about how blockchain could be integrated with Twitter. Jared Birchall, Musk’s partner and senior advisor, also sent him a Bloomberg article referencing Bankman-Fried and his vision for integrating blockchain and social media.

Elon Musk later changed his mind, stating that he did not want to engage with Sam Bankman-Fried in a “laborious discussion about blockchain“. “Blockchain and Twitter are not possible, because the bandwidth and latency requirements cannot be supported by a peer-to-peer network, unless these “peers” are absolutely gigantic, which defeats the purpose of a decentralized network“, Musk told Grimes.