Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, confirmed Thursday its $500M equity investment in Elon Musk's $44B acquisition of social media platform Twitter (NYSE:TWTR).
“Our intern says we wired the $500 million 2 days ago, probably just as I was being asked about Elon/Twitter," Binance Founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao wrote in a Twitter post.
That commitment was first disclosed in May, as reported by Bloomberg, as part of Binance's vision to merge social media with web3, a decentralized version of the internet developed around blockchains.
Other major investors that backed Musk's Twitter (TWTR) deal with $7.1B in financing included Oracle (ORCL) Cofounder Larry Ellison and Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia, a majority stakeholder of Twitter.
Binance did not immediately respond to Seeking Alpha's request for comment.
The Binance stake comes at a time when prices of digital tokens like bitcoin (BTC-USD) and ethereum (ETH-USD) have changed hands at depressed levels since the beginning of 2022, dropping around 70% from their November 2021 peaks. Nevertheless, Binance appears to be weathering the storm as it continues to expand its crypto and web3 businesses. The company recently opened a $500M fund to offer lending to support bitcoin miners.
Earlier, Twitter's execs fired; Musk reportedly plans to take CEO role.