As a reminder, Ilon Musk’s name occasionally finds itself in the spotlight of the digital asset world. The last time it didn’t come about for the best of reasons. In particular, earlier this month it was revealed that Musk had allegedly abandoned plans to create a cryptocurrency wallet for the social platform. Accordingly, we’re unlikely to see the implementation of a feature to send the same DOGE or any other coin anytime soon.

It’s funny that Ilon brought up the name of the already former head of cryptocurrency exchange FTX just in the context of Twitter.

What celebrities are saying about the collapse of FTX

Musk made the comments today, that is, after the bankruptcy filing by FTX. As it turns out, in the first half of this year, Sam Bankman-Fried announced his willingness to partially sponsor Ilon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. According to Decrypt, Sam reached out to Ilon in Spring 2022, and did so through William MacAskill of FTX’s Future Fund division, which was also shut down on Friday.

For his part, the liaison on Musk’s part was his banker Michael Grimes of Morgan Stanley. According to him, Bachmann-Fried offered “as much as $3 billion” and also wanted to discuss the possibility of “integrating blockchain into the social network”.

Musk responded to Michael with the following quote.

Does Sam really have $3 billion in liquid assets?

Musk also added that he didn’t want a “time-consuming debate about blockchain”.

Now, Elon’s correspondence with the banker, which leaked online in September, has been published again. Musk commented on it with this post.

Right. However, my bullshit detector went off, so I thought he didn’t have $3 billion.


As the blockchain community pointed out on Twitter, Sam actually had billions of dollars, only they "belonged to FTX users".


In the end, Musk declined the offer. Despite his love of Dogecoin and occasional tweets about crypto, Ilon stated that “Twitter based on blockchain is impossible.”

Twitter and Tesla CEO Elon Musk

Etherium creator Vitalik Buterin also commented on the developments. He did so during a panel discussion at the LaBitConf conference currently taking place in Buenos Aires. According to Vitalik, the reason for the collapse of FTX and other large companies this year was their operating model. Here’s Buterin’s rejoinder.

This year we have seen a huge number of things break because of a fundamentally bad model at its core.

Buterin also commented on the situation with Sam himself.

Still, people have confidence in a guy who walks around, wears a suit and calls himself a nickname like “Bunkman”.

Vitalik thus commented on the abundance of ads with FTX and Sam Bankman-Freed, which are even now available in San Francisco.

Etherium creator Vitalik Buterin

Buterin also found room for criticism in his comments. He believes that in this case users were more interested in FTX marketing and a “personalistic style” similar to “dictators of the 1930s”. Vitalik also believes FTX has become the exact opposite of the spirit at the heart of cryptocurrencies, which requires projects to strive for decentralisation.


In this case, the centralisation of FTX led to Sam Bankman-Fried managing user funds on his own while hiding this fact from his peers. And because people trusted Sam - including because of his regular appearances in the US Congress - they essentially allowed him to engage in such activities.


Former FTX executive Sam Bankman-Fried on the floor of Congress


We believe that the cryptocurrency industry will have a long time to bounce back from the effects of current events. Whatever the case, the fundamental features of crypto and various blockchain projects remain the same, which means people's reasons to interact with digital assets have not decreased. And when the current crisis passes, the coin industry will move on.


What do you think about the situation? Share your opinion in our Millionaire Crypto Chat. There we talk about other important topics related to the blockchain industry and decentralization.