• @[email protected]
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    3383 months ago

    It was the paid blue checkmark for $8 back in 2022.

    Kinda old article info without much current stuff except the lawsuit against the ad trade group.

    • Zerlyna
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      603 months ago

      Still makes me gleeful reading about his stupidity.

      • @[email protected]
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        753 months ago

        It does, until you realise that his monstrous wealth insulates him from any consequences, deflecting them onto the heads of mortals. No matter what he does, he’ll be alright.

        • Billiam
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          193 months ago

          Not only that, but there are thousands of people insulating him from those consequences. People at Xitter working to keep what functionality they can, despite years of knowing what a shithead Musk is. People who keep the operation of SpaceX separate to make it successful despite his involvement. The Russian and Saudi investors who gave him the money to buy Twitter when he ran his mouth off about it.

        • Zerlyna
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          143 months ago

          I felt a little better reading today how many of his children are conceived IVF or surrogate. I can’t fathom having anyone having sex with him.

    • TJA!
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      3 months ago

      Some days ago I read an article here that said that a lot of the money came from Russia and that they are getting exactly what they wanted: chaos

    • @[email protected]
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      263 months ago

      No one has ever explained how bankers are losing. They say they’ve lost money. Yet the only details are Musk has to make payments and put up Tesla stock as collateral. That a no lose for the banks. They don’t care if Tesla stock crashes, they are making money from selling it.

      • @[email protected]
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        293 months ago

        If Tesla’s stock crashes, then the value the banks could get from selling it is much lower.

        If Twitter and Tesla go bankrupt, the banks will have loaned out billions to own something worthless.

        At least I would assume that’s how it works.

        • @[email protected]
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          193 months ago

          The bankruptcy scenario is correct but the first part isn’t: you don’t have X shares as collateral that you can liquidate. Instead, you have collateral to cover sum Y.

          As long as the collateral contract covers enough stock positions the bank won’t lose.

          That said all of this is assuming standard contracts. If y bank wrote “0% interest and instead 50% of the revenue growth of Twitter” then this would be an easy way to lose money.

          Haven’t heard of a stupid banker yet, though, so what would the chances be?

          • femtech
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            163 months ago

            I mean, the 2008 housing market was done by greedy and stupid bankers.

            • @[email protected]
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              3 months ago

              Stupid? It was a masterstroke by them.

              They made a fortune, then governments had to throw more money at them or risk a complete economic crash.

              After the crash, people were poorer, and credit was cheap, so they came to banks for loans and financed everything more and more, handing even more to the financial sector.

              Houses temporarily crashed in price, but the poorest were too risky for banks to lend to, leading to houses being bought up en-mass by people who were already wealthy.

              Bankers in 2008 were greedy, yes. But certainly not stupid.

              • @[email protected]
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                33 months ago

                IMO they should not have been bailed out. For most people the economy has already failed and it should be allowed to crash fully so that it can be rebuilt and restructured in full. That might sound extreme but I don’t see many other alternatives. Something has to be sacrificed for the sake of the vast majority of people and the real economy and I think it should be the financial sector.

        • Vanth
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          53 months ago

          Careful there, bud, you’re singing the siren song of bank bailouts.

          • Uriel238 [all pronouns]
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            3 months ago

            The proletariat is still sore about the ones in 2008. They revealed plain the stratified economic system.

      • @[email protected]
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        103 months ago

        It’s because when banks make loans, they sell of the debt, but nobody has wanted to buy the debt for Musk’s loans. My understanding of this is essentially, if someone takes out a loan of $100 million, the bank will sell that debt to an investor for $101 million, and the investor will make back $102 million once the loan is paid off due to interest. But no investors are confident enough that Musk will pay back his loan so no one is ponying up the dough to buy it.

        • @[email protected]
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          33 months ago

          That’s easy, just give him a AAA credit rating and call it a bond, some pension fund will buy it.

          • @[email protected]
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            33 months ago

            Take it a step further, bundle it with a bunch of other subprime loans and then pass it around like a hot potato.

      • @[email protected]
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        83 months ago

        I remember reading that the banks who loaned him the money haven’t been able to sell off the debt.

    • @[email protected]
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      323 months ago

      The fact that this tweet caused their stock price to dive really shows what a joke the stock market is .

  • @[email protected]
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    573 months ago

    I’m GLAD we don’t tax Billionaires like Musk! Imagine if instead of buying a Website for $44BILLION he instead bought kids $44BILLION worth of School Lunch! The HORROR!

  • @[email protected]
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    3 months ago

    Ugh… it drives me nuts!

    Musk had to borrow around $13 billion for his doomed $44 billion acquisition.

    Had he spent that $57 $44 billion on developing space hardware instead of going insane and squandering it on social media bullshit, he might have done something worthwhile. I mean… fifty seven billion! What even is that much money? He could have had his own space station for that much money! He could fly up there for weekends, just for funzies.

    • Todd Bonzalez
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      263 months ago

      That $13 billion is part of the $44 billion, you don’t add them together.

      He spent $31 billion of his own capital, and borrowed $13 billion to cover the rest.

      • androogee (they/she)
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        203 months ago

        Oh great, I added all the numbers in your comment together and now it’s $101 billion?? When will this madness end???

        • @[email protected]
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          93 months ago

          With all that money, he could have given every person in the world $12.625 billion!!! It’s unfathomable!

        • @[email protected]
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          33 months ago

          You’ve bamboozled my attempt to make the same joke at your expense by only mentioning one number in your comment, giving me nothing to add to it. From this point on, I conclude we should only ever mention one number in each comment, for clarity.

        • Todd Bonzalez
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          23 months ago

          That’s why I used the word “capital” instead of “money”, but I had a feeling someone still was going to deliberately misunderstand me to try to sound smart.

          • @[email protected]
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            13 months ago

            Well now that you mention it I agree and feel dumb.

            Anyways, I’m still right so it means I can double down.

    • @[email protected]
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      103 months ago

      Why didn’t he just spend his own billions to prop up his venture? Oh, because he doesn’t want to pay taxes.

      • @[email protected]
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        53 months ago

        Haha everyone keeps saying that! But it’s pretty funny how wrong everyone is about where the mistake was.

        The math is just fine, I did the simple addition correctly. It’s the reading comprehension that I got wrong, I misunderstood what the sentence was saying.

        • @[email protected]
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          13 months ago

          You’re right, that is pretty funny. I didn’t notice until you pointed it out in this comment

    • @[email protected]
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      43 months ago

      he might have done something worthwhile

      No, he wouldn’t have. Musk is an incompetent billionaire parasite, even more incompetent than the average billionaire parasite, and would have simply squandered his ill-gotten money on something else.

    • Liz
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      43 months ago

      That’s not how math works.

      • @[email protected]
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        43 months ago

        No, my math is just fine, it’s my reading comprehension that needs work, because I totally misunderstood what that sentence was saying.

  • @[email protected]
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    263 months ago

    Watching Twitter die the slow agonizing cancerous death it deserves makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.

    • @[email protected]
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      33 months ago

      Is it dying though? It is getting worse and worse but I don’t think people are leaving in huge numbers

      • @LiPoly
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        13 months ago

        Oh yes, they are. Every content creator that’s still on Twitter for some reason complains about how engagement is way down. Many are considering leaving Twitter, if they haven’t already. Of course, some groups still remain for now, but it’s just a matter of time until everyone who isn’t a full on Nazi has left that pile of garbage.