The Technical Term for This is Fraud

You may have read that Elon Musk has announced that he has sold Ecch (Twitter) to his artificial intelligence company XAI.

The thing to understand here is that was an all stock transaction, that xAI is privately held, so there is no market price for its stock, and as such, he's basically using magic beans.

This is an attempt to confuse his lenders to delay when they make a margin call and Hoover up the bulk of his stake in Tesla.  (Don't worry, he'll still be worth billions after that)

This is securities fraud, or it would be if we were still enforcing those laws:  (How quaint of me)

Elon Musk announced on Friday that xAI, his artificial intelligence company, had purchased his social media platform X. “xAI and X’s futures are intertwined,” he wrote on X. “Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution, and talent. This combination will unlock immense potential by blending xAI’s advanced A.I. capability and expertise with X’s massive reach.” The all-stock transaction between the two private companies valued xAI at $80 billion [this is a fraud] and X at $33 billion in equity, [this is a fraud] plus $12 billion in debt. [this is a fraud]

The numbers behind Musk’s valuation of X add up to a convenient enterprise value of $45 billion, or $1 billion more than what he paid in 2022 to acquire the company formerly known as Twitter. [this is a fraud]

That Musk would seek to close this chapter of X up $1 billion — notionally, at least — could be a response to critics who say he ran the company aground by decimating its core revenue stream: ad buys from blue-chip companies. Over the past few months, Musk has made a concerted effort to puff up X’s value by claiming a return of the top advertisers who fled the platform after his leveraged buyout. [this is a fraud]

With some top companies resuming advertising on the platform, Musk declared a new $44 billion valuation for X last month, [this is a fraud] even though some X investors valued the company at $12 billion as recently as last December. Musk went on to claim that X had doubled its annual profits since he bought it. [this is a fraud]

The advertisers on Ecch (Twitter), with the exceptions of Chinese firms Temu and Shein (who would advertise on my ass if they knew that there were space available), are small advertisers, and various scammers.  (Particularly crypto scammers)

Ecch (Twitter) has become a haven for scammers, because the Hellsite has refused to investigate them because they need the advertising revenue.

This "Sale" is little more than an attempt to obfuscate the precarious financial position of Musk's Tesla and Ecch (Twitter) holdings from his lenders, and that is pretty clearly fraud.