Elon Musk made an offer to buy Twitter back in April 2022 for $43 billion. Twitter shortly sued the Tesla (TSLA) CEO over the fairly controversial acquisition, which has since fallen through, in an effort to pressure him. In relation to the ongoing lawsuit, a series of messages sent and received by Elon Musk were made public recently. The texts shed some light on the events leading up to the offer and what might have caused Musk to back out of the trade. Musk is scheduled to give a deposition in October.
The 40 pages of text communications covered the six months from January to June. They feature a number of well-known entrepreneurs and public figures — including Gayle King, Jason Calacanis, and the much infamous podcast host Joe Rogan — praising the billionaire’s aspirations for the social media network.
Just days before Musk made a bid to purchase Twitter (TWTR), he was seen stating in a text message, “I think a new social media firm is needed that would be based on a blockchain that includes payments.”
Musk made a purchase bid for the social networking site because he thought it undermined democracy by failing to guarantee free expression. The text message conversations in the days before the acquisition announcement further show Musk had blockchain in mind as a potential remedy for Twitter’s free expression issue.