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🍪 Elon buys Twitter, take two

🍪 Elon buys Twitter, take two

Bite Sized Beta
October 06, 2022

Top of the mornin’ to ya, friend! We’re less than 60 days away from December 1st, which means it’s time to start listening to the cool music so your Spotify Wrapped ain’t just Flo Rida.

Let’s get to the good stuff.

In the oven this week:

🐤 A deep dive on the Elon Twitter fiasco
🍪 Cookie crumbs: 7 bite-sized headlines
🍫 Chocolate chips: best finds this week
😂 Snickerdoodles because you can never skimp on the memes

FRESHLY BAKED

ELON'S BUYING TWITTER (AGAIN)

Well folks, the Elon Twitter saga seems to finally be coming to a close. And what do we have at the end of it?

Us, walking in a giant f-ing circle, that's what.

Because it feels like we’ve followed 10 lifetimes of drama, yet, we're back at the same place we started: Elon's buying Twitter for $54.20 per share.

It’s like choosing what ice cream flavor to get. Ten samples later, ya somehow always end up back at good ol’ trusty mint chip.

Elon sent Twitter a letter this week confirming his intent to close the original deal. It’s still pending approval, but it’s as close to done as we’ve gotten since April.

Sooo what happens next? Let’s talk winners and losers.

Winners:

Twitter shareholders, who now get saved from the tumbling stock
The crypto community: Elon’s texts with Jack Dorsey got leaked this week, and it confirms that he’s bullish on de-fi and other crypto-esque features in Twitter, like making the algorithm open source. Having him as head honcho could accelerate crypto adoption. Some of his texts:

Losers: basically everyone else.

Elon, who basically overpaid just to get more work thrown on his plate LOL
Twitter employees, who now have to deal with the whims of Elon
Tesla shareholders, who saw their stock plummet, since Musk ain’t buyin' back Tesla shares anytime soon
Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and Barclays, who committed to lend Musk the dough before inflation and interest rate hikes

After all this kerfuffle, you have to wonder what the heck he’s planning on doing with it. On Tuesday, he shared his ambitions to create a super-app like WeChat.

One cool piece of history on X: Elon bought the x.com domain for his payments startup in 1999, which eventually became rebranded as PayPal.

In 2017, he bought the domain back and has kept it waiting in the wings, until now. 👀 Hope it still comes with some PayPal mafia magic.

Our take on all this:

If this deal goes through, it's game time. Super-apps have been hugely successful in Asia, but haven’t yet translated in the West. But if anyone can make super-apps happen, it’s Elon.

For Twitter plebeians like us, it’s time to buckle up for a wild ride.

Elon Musk is buying Twitter after Twitter didn’t want him to buy them, Elon didn’t want to buy them, and Twitter wanted to force him to buy them
— Dr. Parik Patel, BA, CFA, ACCA Esq. (@ParikPatelCFA)
Oct 4, 2022

COOKIE CRUMBS

BITE SIZED TREATS

Get your wallets ready, Walmart and Amazon are going toe to toe with parallel sales events next week: Amazon’s holding a second Prime event for the first time ever on October 11th and 12th. Walmart couldn't be left out, and just announced a sale of their own from October 10th-13th. It’s a party to the bottom - let’s see who can get low.

MBA applications are down 15% at Harvard, 13% at Wharton, and 10% at other top tier programs. If you’re thinking about applying and can get past the $200K sticker price, now’s probably a less competitive time to apply.

Goodwill launches a new website to bring its secondhand catalog online. All we can say is, it's ABOUT TIME. Just in time for you to grab stuff for that questionable DIY Halloween costume idea.

Kim Kardashian got hit with a $1.26M SEC fine for promoting an altcoin last year, while celebs that did similar ads went unpunished. Why? If you're endorsing a crypto company, all you gotta do is follow FTC rules and stamp #ad on your endorsement. But if you’re promoting a specific security like Kim did, you have to follow SEC rules and disclose how much you were paid, which she didn’t do. Good thing she’s currently worth $1.8B, so this is just…. 0.07% of her fortune. Wild.

Nestle is saving coffee - they're investing $1B to protect coffee from supply risks from climate change. Farmers are getting training on the best planting techniques plus cash incentives for practicing sustainable farming. Now we can sleep easy knowing our iced pumpkin spice latte with vanilla sweet cream cold foam is being protected by the big guns.

Jobs data is out, and US job openings fell by more than 1.1 million in August, the second largest monthly decline in the last 2 decades (#1 was April 2020).

Ray Dalio is stepping down from his chief investment officer role at Bridgewater, transferring all of his voting rights to the board.

CHOCOLATE CHIPS

BEST FINDS OF THE WEEK

Mathematically, how to reliably win at the most consequential game known to mankind — rock, paper, scissors.
A great step by step guide on how to build wealth
PSA for those looking for the next great read, the 2022 National Book Award finalists were just announced
A Twitter account that tracks the latest stock portfolio and trading activity of Warren Buffet, Nancy Pelosi, and Ray Dalio.

SNICKERDOODLES

THURSDAY MEMES

This is the only advertisement this window installer ever needs to use.
— Bizarre Lazar (@BizarreLazar)
Oct 2, 2022

That's all we got today folks, see ya next week!

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