The Time Disgraced Bankman-Fried Offered Musk $5 Billion: Musk's 'Bulls*** Detector Went Off'
Sam Bankman-Fried was once a well-respected name in many circles. He was a billionaire, a crypto tycoon, and one of the Democratic Party’s biggest megadonors.
Today, however, he’s known as the man accused of defrauding the customers of his centralized cryptocurrency exchange, FTX, which collapsed back in December, according to the Daily Caller.
Long before news came out of his alleged misdeeds, however, back when Bankman-Fried was still well-respected, X (previously known as Twitter) owner Elon Musk sensed something was amiss with the billionaire.
According to a recently released article from The Wall Street Journal reporting on, in great detail, Musk’s dealings leading up to his acquisition of Twitter, Bankman-Fried wanted to take part in the purchase.
The now-disgraced billionaire offered to use his expertise to engineer “the social media blockchain integration” of Twitter if Musk were to acquire it.
He also offered $5 billion of his own capital to go towards the acquisition.
Musk wasn’t interested.
For starters, he didn’t like Bankman-Fried’s ideas, especially when it came to “building a social network on the blockchain” as the latter suggested.
Eventually, Musk did agree to speak with Bankman-Fried so long as he didn’t “have to have a laborious blockchain debate.”
After acquiring Musk’s number, presumable through a third party, Bankman-Fried texted him directly about the deal, prompting the following reply from Musk: “Sorry, who is sending this message?”
Once the two finally got on the phone together, Musk’s impression of Bankman-Fried seemed to go from bad to worse, according to the Journal’s reporting.
Musk said Bankman-Fried came off as fast-talking and self-interested in the conversation.
“My bullshit detector went off like red alert on a Geiger counter,” Musk said. “He was talking like he was on speed or Adderall, a mile a minute.”
“I thought he was supposed to be asking me questions about the deal, but he kept telling me the things he was doing. And I was thinking, ‘Dude, calm down.’”
Bankman-Fried apparently wasn’t too fond of Musk either by the call’s end.
The pair ended up not working together at all.
Given everything that transpired since then with Bankman-Fried, the collapse of his company and the tarnishing of his reputation, it seems Musk dodged a pretty big bullet.
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