Breaking: Elon Musk Joins Twitter Board After Becoming Its Largest Shareholder

Musk's surprise move to acquire 9.2% ownership of Twitter gives him four times the share volume as former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who holds 2.3% of the outstanding stock.

In a tweet posted this morning, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal announced that Elon Musk has joined the social media network's board of directors. The statement on Agrawal's official Twitter channel to his 445K Twitter followers reads:

"I'm excited to share that we're appointing @elonmusk to our board! Through conversations with Elon in recent weeks, it became clear to us that he would bring great value to our Board."

It's interesting to note that Musk currently has more than 80 million followers on Twitter, while its current CEO has fewer than half a million. So not only will Musk bring "value" but a massive amount of grassroots influence and support to the board, which the board may or may not necessarily want.

Musk holds four times the shares as ex-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey

The SEC filings became public yesterday that disclosed the Tesla CEO had acquired a 9.2% stake in Twitter back on Mar. 14, 2022 -- becoming the largest individual shareholder of Twitter. Musk's number of shares has been valued at $2.90 billion and is currently four times the holdings of former Twitter CEO and Bitcoin maximalist, Jack Dorsey.

Musk had hinted in recent weeks that he may launch a separate social media platform to be fueled by his favorite cryptocurrency Dogecoin (DOGE). But the self-named "Doge Father" now seems focused on transforming Twitter. Dogecoin is up more than 5% this morning at press time, according to CoinMarketCap.

Musk's Dogecoin vision on Twitter

Before becoming a billionaire through the creation of SpaceX, StarLink, or Tesla, Musk made millions as a cofounder of one of the most trusted and popular digital payment platforms in the world, PayPal. His background makes him a digital payment expert, and makes his dogged support of the dog-themed crypto Dogecoin noteworthy and credible.

In a TIME cover story last December, Musk described DOGE as a superior form of digital payment compared to Bitcoin, which has the largest market valuation of any crypto and is more than 40 times the market value of DOGE, according to CoinMarketCap.

"Even though it was created as a silly joke, Dogecoin is better suited for transactions. The total transaction flow -- transactions per day -- that you can do with Dogecoin has much higher potential than Bitcoin. It is slightly inflationary, but that inflationary number is a fixed number as opposed to a percentage. Which means that over time, its percentage of inflation decreases. That's actually good because it encourages people to spend it rather than hoard as a store of value," Musk was quoted as saying in the TIME article.

Musk has wasted no time trying to effect change, as he posted a tweet last night asking if users want an edit button for their Twitter missives. So far, 70% of respondents voted "yes" to that upgrade and that tweet has received more than 240,000 "likes."

No one knows for sure what Musk has planned for Dogecoin and Twitter, but as the largest shareholder, with 80 million Twitter followers and a board of directors' seat -- he will have say and sway over that social media company's future indefinitely.