Binance CEO would join Twitter board if Elon Musk asks
Quick Take
- Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao says he’s “not dying” to join the board as a minority shareholder of Twitter, but would do so if asked.
- Zhao says Musk has “lots of things to change” including firing Twitter employees.
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao says he’d be willing to join Twitter’s board of directors if invited by the social media platform’s new owner Elon Musk.
"Elon’s still deciding about the board, if he asks me to do it I probably will,” Zhao said while speaking at technology conference in Lisbon, Portugal.
Binance recently poured $500 million into Elon Musk’s takeover bid for social media platform Twitter, which closed last week. Despite a rocky acquisition process, Binance’s top boss stuck to his plans to lend financial support to Musk’s $44 billion bid. The crypto exchange was among dozens of outside investors which also included Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, venture capital firm Sequoia and Fidelity.
On the heels of the deal closing, Zhao said Binance plans “to play a role in bringing social media and web3 together in order to broaden the use and adoption of crypto and blockchain technology." A Binance spokesperson echoed the CEO’s sentiments, saying that the company would create a team to aid Twitter’s use of blockchain technology.
When asked in Lisbon about incorporating crypto into Twitter’s platform, Zhao mentioned allowing for payments, saying that integration would be easy.
But Zhao stressed that Binance is a minority investor in Twitter and he realizes Musk is busy and he will wait for a more detailed plan on how the social media platform can more fully leverage blockchain and crypto. For now the Binance CEO expects Musk has other concerns.
“Musk has a lot of people to fire, lots of things to change,” he said.
And joining the Twitter board isn’t top of mind, said Zhao. “I’d probably do it as a favor. Not something I'm dying to do.”
Twitter has dabbled with blockchain, albeit not on a significant level. Besides allowing some Twitter users to utilize non-fungible tokens as their profile photo on the platform, the social media company recently announced it was expanding a pilot program called NFT Tweet Tiles to a test group who can experiment with posting non-fungible tokens listed on a handful of exchanges including Magic Eden, Rarible, Dapper Labs and Jump.trade. Users will be able to click on the tweeted NFTs and then purchase them from the corresponding exchange.
Twitter reported earlier this year it had roughly 230 million daily active users. Any moves to incorporate crypto and blockchain across the platform could lead to wider adoption among people who have yet to engage with the, at times, polarizing technology.
In the last two years one of the topics most popular among Twitter’s English-speaking users has become cryptocurrency. Many well-known crypto and non-fungible token enthusiasts often use the platform to both discuss market moves and promote new digital assets. At one point Musk expressed interest in putting Twitter on the blockchain, according to text messages made public, but then appeared to change his mind.
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