Elon Musk, the Tesla CEO, makes a startling bid for Twitter using a secret code.
Elon Musk’s spectacular $43 billion bid for Twitter has a recurring and coded motif. The Tesla CEO offered the board of directors a very specific price of $54.20 per share in cash to take total ownership of the social media network, claiming that he was the best person to “unlock” its “extraordinary potential.”
The entrepreneur isn’t the first to utilise those exact digits as a secret code in his commercial operations.
He announced his intention to take Tesla private at $420 per share on Twitter in August 2018.
Mr Musk bumped up the share price from $419 to $420 “because he had recently learned about the number’s significance in marijuana culture.” The filing added a quote from Mr Musk, in which he said he thought his girlfriend, pop star Grimes, would find the price he had chosen “funny, which admittedly is not a great reason to pick a price.”
He had joked about consuming marijuana at Twitter board meetings by releasing a meme of him surrounded by smoke while a guest on Joe Rogan’s podcast just days before his Twitter offer of $54.20 per share in cash.
The meme’s caption said, “Twitter’s next board meeting igonna be lit.” Mr Musk is attempting to get out of an arrangement with the Securities and Exchange Commission that requires a Tesla lawyer to review any tweets regarding the company before they are posted.
Mr Musk tweeted “the stock is so high lol” in December 2019, when Tesla stock topped $420 per share.
Tesla increased the price of the Tesla Model S sedan to $69,420 in 2020.
The origins of 420 in marijuana culture are murky, with a slew of generally disproved hypotheses as to why they’ve become inextricably linked.
None of them appear to be accurate, including police radio codes for marijuana smoking, a secret code among high school students in the 1970s, and a reference to California’s criminal code.
However, marijuana smokers celebrate April 20, also known as “420,” as “Weed Day.”
The Tesla CEO offered the board of directors a very specific price of $54.20 per share in cash to take total ownership of the social media network, claiming that he was the best person to “unlock” its “extraordinary potential.”