Binance, co-investor of Elon Musk, building a team to help Twitter with blockchain

Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, which invested $500 million in Elon Musk’s buyout of Twitter, is creating a team to work on how blockchain and crypto can benefit Twitter, a company spokesperson said on Friday. As one of Elon Musk’s co-investors to fund his $44 billion (almost Rs 3,62,300 crore) deal, Binance said it will consider plans and strategies that could help Elon Musk run the platform.

The newly formed team will explore how to build on-chain solutions to address Twitter’s problems, including the proliferation of bot accounts, a problem Musk has repeatedly complained about and nearly rejected his proposal.

Musk’s Twitter takeover saga came to an end on Thursday when the deal officially closed after months of twists and turns in and out of the courtroom and Musk promptly fired the social media platform’s top executives.

Twitter began exploring ways to incorporate blockchain technology under co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey, who was a proponent of Bitcoin.

In November 2021, Twitter launched an internal crypto team to build features that incorporate such technologies. The company introduced the ability for paid Twitter subscribers to use non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as their avatar photo.

In text messages with confidants that were released as part of the Twitter litigation, Musk discussed the possibility of putting Twitter on the blockchain, though he later appeared to decide that such a move wouldn’t work.

It’s unclear how actively co-investors like Binance can be involved in Twitter’s future as a minority investor, as Musk fully controls the board and decision-making at the now-private Twitter. Most of his co-investors are funds such as Sequoia Capital, Fidelity Management, Andreessen Horowitz and Brookfield. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, known as CZ, is an active Twitter user with over 7 million followers on the platform.

© Thomson Reuters 2022