Binance will probably stick to its promise to put $500 million towards Elon Musk’s on-again, off-again bid to buy Twitter at $54.20 per share.
The exchange’s CEO, Changpeng Zhao (CZ), was recently asked whether he still stood with his fellow billionaire.
“I think so,” he said, when speaking at the Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.
CZ promised to back the bid when it was announced in April, joining a handful of other crypto-adjacent financial companies, including Fidelity Management and Sequoia Capital.
Musk shared private messages with other crypto moguls earlier this year discussing how they might make Twitter more “decentralized.”
For Binance, CZ said it presented a chance to help bridge social media and news into Web3. However, he later clarified that his support would only remain so long as Musk actually followed through on the deal.
“If he’s off, we’re off,” said the Binance CEO during an interview in June.
Musk nearly did back out of the agreement the following month, objecting to what he characterized as Twitter’s failure to give him sufficient information about the prevalence of spam bots on its platform.
Yet with mounting legal pressure from Twitter to close the deal, Musk eventually agreed to the original terms. It now must be closed by Friday or risks ending up back in court.
Meanwhile, according to sources contacted by Bloomberg, officials from the Biden administration are discussing whether to subject some of Musk’s ventures to national security reviews. Among them are his Twitter buyout, which is being supported by multiple foreign investors including Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia.
Binance’s CEO is himself a Chinese native, but fiercely denied allegations that Binance is a “Chinese company” in a blog post last month.
