On Saturday morning, Billionaire investor-inventor Elon Musk took a swipe at Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates by sharing a tongue-in-cheek post on Twitter. Tesla Inc. chief Elon Musk took to Twitter to share an image of Bill Gates alongside an emoji of a man with a fat belly. Sharing the image, Musk tweeted, “in case you need to lose a boner fast”.
Now, we can’t really afford to interpret what Musk meant when he spoke about “loosing a boner fast”, but it is evident that Elon Musk is upset with Bill Gates and in this article, we attempt to explain why.
in case u need to lose a boner fast pic.twitter.com/fcHiaXKCJi
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 23, 2022
Apparently, Elon Musk’s tweet takes a dig at Bill Gates over his affair with a Microsoft employee, which led to a divorce from his wife, Melinda Gates.
One of the reasons why inventor-investor Musk is angry with Bill Gates is that the former Microsoft had previously tried shorting his Tesla stock positions worth half a billion, which could have pushed Tesla’s stock prices downwards.
Twitter user Whole Mars Catalog, who shared images of a purported conversation between Elon Musk and Bill Gates, claimed that Bill Gates had apparently texted Elon Musk to discuss “philanthropy” on climate change. However, Elon Musk had confronted Gates, asking whether he still had a half-billion short positions on Tesla stocks.
The screenshots contain a conversation between Elon Musk and Bill Gates. The screenshots showed a text message from Bill Gates congratulating Elon Musk on the success of SpaceX. In response, Musk asks Gates whether he still had a half-billion-dollar short position against Tesla.
To which Gates confirms, saying, “Sorry to say, I haven’t closed it out”, which meant that Gates still holds considerable short positions on Tesla, which could disrupt Tesla’s stock prices.
So apparently Bill Gates hit up @elonmusk to discuss “philanthropy on climate change” but Elon asked if he still had a half billion dollar short position on $TSLA.
— Whole Mars Catalog (@WholeMarsBlog) April 22, 2022
Bill said he hasn’t closed it out, so Elon told him to get lost. No idea if this is true lol pic.twitter.com/iuHkDG3bAd
Further, Gates also adds that he wanted to discuss philanthropy possibilities.
An angry Musk responds to Bill Gates saying he cannot take his philanthropy activities on climate change seriously when he has a massive short position against Tesla, the company doing the most to solve Climate Change.
The Twitter user also tagged Elon Musk to confirm whether the incident was true.
Elon Musk responded to the Twitter user by saying it was true, but he did not leak it to New York Times.
“They must have got it through friends of friends. I heard from multiple people at TED that Gates still had half-billion short against Tesla, which is why I asked him, so it’s not exactly top secret,” Musk said.
Yeah, but I didn’t leak it to NYT. They must have got it through friends of friends.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 23, 2022
I heard from multiple people at TED that Gates still had half billion short against Tesla, which is why I asked him, so it’s not exactly top secret.
Interestingly, in his inimitable style, Elon Musk not only trolled Bill Gates with his initial meme but also managed to call out Twitter, a company that he has been trying to take over.
Elon Musk responded to his own tweet, in which he had trolled Bill Gates and said that the “shadow ban council” was reviewing the tweet.
shadow ban council reviewing tweet … pic.twitter.com/cawjtwc7CW
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 23, 2022
Essentially, Elon Musk was talking about the clandestine function of Twitter where the social media giant has the propensity to limit the reach of tweets and opinions that they seem to disagree with. In this, the user does not really know that their tweet has been limited, but Twitter arbitrarily “shadow bans” the tweet without any notification to the user.
Recently, billionaire inventor-investor Elon Musk said he had secured $46.5 billion in financing to fund his Twitter takeover bid. According to reports, Elon Musk has lined up $46.5 billion in debt and equity financing to buy Twitter Inc. The billionaire investor is also considering buying shares directly from shareholders.
Elon Musk is considering funding up to $33.5 billion on his own, including $21 billion of equity and $12.5 billion of margin loans against some of his Tesla Inc shares to invest in Twitter.
According to the filing on Thursday, Musk is also considering a tender offer to buy all company stock from shareholders but has not taken any decision. The filing revealed that a group of banks led by Morgan Stanley is prepared to lend Musk $25.5 billion.
What is a “short position” and how will it affect Tesla
For starters, a short position is a trading technique in which an investor sells the stocks at first at a higher rate, only to buy them later when the prices go down. A trader may decide to short security when he believes that the price of that security is likely to decrease in the near future.
Gates holding half-a-billion short positions of Tesla is bad for Elon Musk since massive short transactions by influential entities like Bill Gates would likely create panic in the market, leading to a fall in prices of stocks in the future. Perhaps, Musk thought that Gates held short positions of Tesla to gain leverage on Elon Musk, hence he may have been angry at Bill Gates.
Musk’s tweet mocking Bill Gates has become an instant hit on Twitter, with people appreciating the sense of humour of the world’s richest man.
