Elon Musk has finally closed his deal to buy the social media platform Twitter. The deal’s closure had a deadline of this Friday at 5 pm ET, after which a previously-postponed lawsuit by Twitter against Musk to get ahead with the deal would have been resumed.
First announced in April, the deal hit multiple hurdles along the way, including Musk’s reservations about the number of spam bots on Twitter. However, earlier this month, Musk proposed going ahead with the deal at the initially agreed price of $44 billion, or $54.20 per share.
During the deal, Twitter’s share price was $53.70 at market close, whereas Musk’s favored cryptocurrency, dogecoin (DOGE), was trading down 2.3% at 00:43 UTC, after increasing 16% in the lead till the deal’s completion. Musk said that dogecoin could be used for specific payments at Twitter
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Musk had criticized Twitter’s workforce as “lazy and politically biased.” According to sources, Musk has told potential investors he plans to cut Twitter’s staff from about 7,500 employees to just over 2,000. Musk denied the report. There is also speculation about top executives being asked to leave Twitter.
Musk fired Twitter CEO Parag Agarwal, after the acquisition. Legal executive Vijaya Gadde, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal, and General Counsel Sean Edgett were also fired. ‘The bird is freed’, Musk tweeted.
Potential crypto plans for Twitter remain unclear. In June, Musk discussed the logic for integrating digital payments into its service. Twitter added bitcoin tipping in 2021 under the previous CEO Jack Dorsey. The company also added ether wallets to the feature at the beginning of this year.
Twitter also became the first-ever company to use a new program from payments processor Stripe, which announced a feature allowing payments in USDC via Polygon in April. Musk’s takeover is being seen as a win for the crypto community.
