Embattled FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried reportedly holds about $100 million in Twitter stock.
The Tesla CEO reportedly texted Bankman-Fried just after midnight on May 5, a few weeks after Elon Musk offered to buy Twitter for $44 billion, inviting him to convert his shares of the publicly traded Twitter company into shares of Twitter after Elon Musk took it private. “illiquid” assets.
Elon Musk’s text message to Bankman-Freed followed a message from the latter saying he supported Elon Musk’s plan to take Twitter private and that he could not invest any more in the company. The cryptocurrency founder added that he had about $100 million worth of stock to transfer into the deal.
Neither Twitter nor FTX spokespeople have commented.
The text messages between Elon Musk and Bankman-Freed about the Twitter buyout were revealed back in September during the pretrial investigation of Twitter’s lawsuit against Elon Musk for abandoning the buyout.
Bankman-Freed’s advisor Will MacAskill contacted Elon Musk in March saying the FTX founder was considering buying Twitter stock himself and was willing to contribute up to $8 billion to $15 billion to Elon Musk’s takeover.
The two reportedly communicated by phone, and Bankman-Freed later decided not to participate in the acquisition.
Since then, Elon Musk has tweeted several times to disparage Bankman-Freed.
“Gosh, everybody, including the big investment banks — everybody’s talking about him like he’s going to fly on water and have unlimited wealth, but I don’t get that impression.” He said, “The guy is just — something’s not right, he doesn’t have the capital, he can’t get through it. That’s my prediction.”
Elon Musk’s comments came shortly after news broke that FTX had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection because it was unable to secure emergency funding. Bankman-Freed reportedly lost 94 percent of his net worth the day he resigned as CEO.
Bankman-Freed is not the only one who has converted his shares of Twitter’s publicly traded company into private company stock. Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey also transferred $1 billion in Twitter stock to the company, which has been taken private by Elon Musk.
