Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover attempt: what it means for crypto
Last week Elon Musk announced a takeover bid for Twitter. This came after much back and forth between the famed Tesla CEO and the social media giant regarding whether Musk, who had bought a number of shares, would be afforded a position on Twitter’s board. There’s no way of knowing how this Musk-Twitter dance will end, but one thing is for sure, there will most certainly be repercussions for the crypto community one way or another.
At face value it is difficult to predict what exactly Musk’s possible takeover of Twitter means for crypto. On the one hand, Musk has been a huge advocate for crypto. Tesla was one of the biggest brands globally to accept Bitcoin as payment. However, in 2021 it stopped accepting Bitcoin payments, citing environmental concerns related to mining. This announcement saw Bitcoin’s price tumble. However, Tesla remains a large holder of crypto, in fact, it is one of the largest corporate holders.
Musk’s personal opinion of crypto can be difficult to gauge. He is certainly an advocate for cryptocurrencies in their purest form. In fact, he is a big supporter of memecoin Dogecoin (DOGE), even suggesting that DOGE is better for payments than BTC and ETH. But while he may love crypto, he is less of a fan of the centralised infrastructure and exchanges that are emerging in the ecosystem. He has also been vocal about his distaste for the term Web3, suggesting that it is just a marketing buzzword. Overall, in his prolific commentary on crypto Musk seems to reveal himself as a crypto fundamentalist of sorts, who believes that nothing should corrupt the decentralisation of cryptocurrency or the broader ecosystem.
If Musk’s Twitter takeover bid is successful then his power and influence globally will certainly expand. Without a doubt, Musk would channel this influence to help in shaping the further development of the crypto space – especially given that Twitter is seen as a very crypto-friendly space.
More Musk influence in the crypto landscape will likely see more focus on decentralisation, with more decentralised exchanges and distributed infrastructure. And even if this takeover bid is unsuccessful, knowing Musk’s tenacity something even bigger and more disruptive to the status quo will be in the pipeline.
