Web3 giant Binance confirms $500M equity stake in Elon Musk's Twitter takeover

Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, confirmed Thursday its $500M equity investment in Elon Musk's $44B acquisition of social media platform Twitter (NYSE:TWTR). “Our intern says we wired the $500 million 2 days ago, probably just as I was being asked about Elon/Twitter," Binance Founder and CEO Chaopeng Zhao wrote in a Twitter post. That commitment was first disclosed in May by Bloomberg as part of Binance's vision to merge social media with web3, a decentralized version of the internet developed around blockchains. Other major investors that backed Musk's Twitter (TWTR) deal included Oracle (ORCL) Cofounder Larry Ellison and Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia, a majority stakeholder of Twitter. The Binance stake comes at a time when prices of digital tokens like bitcoin (BTC-USD) and ethereum (ETH-USD) have changed hands at depressed levels since the beginning of 2022, dropping around 70% from their November 2021 peaks. Nevertheless, Binance appears to be weathering the storm as it continues to expand its crypto and web3 businesses. The company recently opened a $500M fund to offer lending support bitcoin miners. Binance did not immediately respond to Seeking Alpha's request for comment. Earlier, Twitter's execs fired; Musk reportedly plans to take CEO role.