Elon Musk Buys $2.4B Worth of Twitter Shares, Dogecoin Rises

Tesla CEO and founder Elon Musk became a new official owner of Twitter after acquiring almost 73.5 million shares of the social media network, which attracts more than 217 million active users each day.

As stated in a filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, Elon Musk bought 73,486,938 Twitter shares on March 14 via the Elon Musk Revocable Trust. 

This amounts to 9.2% of the common stock and makes Elon Musk one of Twitter’s biggest shareholders. Reportedly, his share of the company does not involve any shared voting power, meaning that Musk will not be involved in the day-to-day decision-making of the company’s operations.

TWTR Price Skyrockets

Musk paid approximately $2.4 billion for the purchase at the $33.03 Twitter share price noted at the time. The entrepreneur struck the deal at a time when Twitter’s stock price was at is lowest level since July 2020.  

However, Musk’s investment prompted Twitter’s stock price to undergo a reverse of fortunes as Twitter stock jumped over a two week period by more than 48% to reach $49.09 on March 29th. The price has slightly corrected since then and sits at $47.80 at the time of writing. 

Following the TWTR price changes, Elon Musk’s wealth has increased by more than $1.2 billion across the same period.

Previous Plans

Last week Elon Musk addressed his 80.2 million Twitter users with a question, asking them if free speech is essential to a functioning democracy, and whether Twitter rigorously adheres to that principle. Musk further asked his followers to vote carefully as he emphasized that the consequences of the poll would be important.

The poll inspired further discussion that led Elon Musk to reveal that he had been having “serious thoughts” of creating a social media platform that would adhere to the principles of “free speech,” and might even accept Dogecoin payments.

Dogecoin’s Price Spikes

Dogecoin’s (DOGE) price made a took on a steep incline immediately following the news that Musk had acquired shares into Twitter came out earlier today. The price of the prominent meme coin increased by nearly 9%, jumping from $0.1421 to $0.1543 in the span of just a few hours.

Dogecoin has been experiencing an uptrend again since mid-March, with the value of the coin increasing by almost 38% from its $0.1119 price recorded on March 15th, to $0.1534 on April 4th.  

Large Dogecoin transactions, specifically those that exceed a value of $100K, spiked by 133% last Monday, suggesting that whales might be back in for the meme coin. At the time of writing, 66% of the total circulating DOGE supply is concentrated in the hands of large holders.