“He Set Off My BS Detector”: Elon Musk Passed On Having Sam Bankman-Fried As Investor In Twitter

While Elon Musk is certainly busy dealing with his own set of problems in the world of Tesla and Twitter, one thing he doesn’t have to worry about is being entangled with the now-defunct FTX, or its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried.

That’s because, according to Musk, Bankman-Fried set off his “BS detector” when he approached Musk about a potential investment in Twitter, according to Musk and a new Yahoo! Finance article. 

The crypto tycoon turned likely fugitive on the run reached out to Musk in March of this year, the report says, through William MacAskill from FTX’s Future Fund philanthropic arm. 

Michael Grimes from Morgan Stanley, who was acting as Musk’s banker on the deal, told him that SBF was read to pony up “at least $3 billion” to help fund the buyout of Twitter, the report says. In exchange for investing, Bankman-Fried reportedly “wanted to talk about the potential for ‘social media blockchain integration.'”

At the time, it prompted Musk to ask: “Does Sam actually have $3B liquid?”

Sam Bankman-Fried reaches out to Elon Musk

April 25, 2022 pic.twitter.com/f2VxnGmLLP

— Internal Tech Emails (@TechEmails) November 11, 2022

“He’s into you… I do believe you will like him. Ultra genius and doer builder like your formula. Built FTX from scratch after MIT physics,” Musk’s banker told him about Bankman-Fried, who was reportedly “interested in helping to engineer a blockchain version of Twitter”. 

“Blockchain twitter isn’t possible,” Musk responded, adding that he would only take the meeting if he didn’t have to have a “laborious blockchain debate.”

Musk ultimately wound up passing on the decision to welcome Bankman-Fried as an investor. Then, after FTX went under, Musk took to Twitter to respond to one user’s post about how everyone was gushing over Bankman-Fried.

“My response to SBF was…different,” Musk wrote. “He set off my bs detector, which is why I did not think he had $3B,” he said in another post.

My reaction to SBF was … different

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 13, 2022