The head of cryptocurrency exchange Binance claims that he was not aware of Elon Musk's plans when the business magnate abandoned and then relaunched his takeover of Twitter.
The biggest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, Binance, has contributed $500 million to help Musk acquire Twitter, making it one of the company's equity backers.
Changpeng Zhao claimed he was "a little surprised" to learn that Musk had ultimately agreed to buy the company while speaking on stage at the Web Summit technology conference in Lisbon, Portugal.
"It's very hard to predict what Elon will do next," Zhao told the audience on the opening night of Web Summit Tuesday (via CNBC). "The deal was on, the deal was off, the deal was on. It's OK, we're committed on our support."
Zhao has stated his desire to include Twitter in "Web3," a phrase used by the technology industry to define the future generation of the internet.
He added that Musk's attempts to back out of the deal did not bother him:
"For me, large deals like this, there's so many different factors involved. I'm not directly involved in what he's thinking ... There's so many different little things that could go one way or another, negotiations, changes of minds."
Zhao claimed that he agreed with Musk's goal of promoting free expression on the platform and getting rid of bots and suspicious users.
When Musk agreed to a formal agreement with the firm last month, the protracted story surrounding his purchase of Twitter came to an end.
He originally changed his mind about purchasing the business due to worries about suspicious accounts, but later did so in order to avoid a contentious legal dispute with the firm management, who had sought to force him to acquire it after he had changed his mind.
He has since abolished Twitter's board of directors, sacked some of its senior executives, and appointed himself CEO. Musk is already talking about ways to boost the platform's monetization initiatives, including charging a charge for verified users.
Initially, it was reported that he will charge users $20 for a "blue tick" badge on their accounts, but his most recent tweets indicate that he is leaning toward $8 instead.
Zhao stated that he was aware of Musk's plan to charge for verification badges but was unaware of the newest developments.
"Elon Musk's probably a hard guy for me to predict," he said. "I'm not the CEO of Twitter. We're an investor in Twitter but I'm not running it."
