Sam Benkman-Fried, the former CEO of Twitter’s FTX exchange, which is owned by Elon Musk, has about $100 million in shares, a new report says. The world’s richest person previously said that when he heard the FTX founder’s offer of financial assistance on this social network, he came to the conclusion that he was a fool.
According to the Semafor website, Sam Benkman-Fried is involved in the acquisition of Twitter. Tesla’s CEO apparently invited the then-FTX CEO to keep his public shares of the social network after the deal in text messages, weeks after submitting a $44 billion bid for Twitter on May 5. In the balance sheet published by FTX not long ago, it can be seen that Twitter shares are listed as non-cash assets.
In response to Musk’s text message, Sam Benkman-Fried said that he supports his plan to acquire Twitter, but cannot make new investments in this social network. He added that he owns about $100 million of the company’s stock, which he could transfer to the deal.
Benkman-Fried refrained from further investing in Twitter
However, Bankman-Fried adviser Will McCaskill contacted Musk again in March, this time claiming that the FTX founder was considering buying Twitter himself, and was willing to pay between $8 billion and $15 billion. This deal will help the CEO of Tesla. The two discussed the matter in a phone call, and Benkman-Fried later reportedly decided not to play a role in the deal.
Since then, Elon Musk has had several attacks on Sam Benkman-Fried and the FTX exchange crash on his page. Benkman-Fried is not the only person who has transferred his public shares to the private company Twitter; Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of this social enterprise, also had about $1 billion in shares and still maintains this asset. Keeping these assets has helped Musk not need to buy them and pay their owners.
