On October 27, 2022, Elon Musk completed his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter. He walked into the building carrying a sink, tweeted "let that sink in," and became the owner of one of the mo
On October 27, 2022, Elon Musk completed his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter. He walked into the building carrying a sink, tweeted "let that sink in," and became the owner of one of the most consequential, and expensive, platforms in media history.
Twitter, now rebranded as X, has had a turbulent run since. Fidelity marked its value down by as much as 79 percent at one point.
It has since recovered, with the platform broadly valued back around $44 billion following improved financials and returning advertisers. In other words, after two and a half years, Musk is roughly where he started.
So here is the question: what if he had split that $44 billion between Bitcoin and gold instead?
At $22 billion allocated to Bitcoin on the day the Twitter deal closed, Musk could have bought approximately 1.1 million BTC at the prevailing price of roughly $20,000 per coin. Bitcoin was deep in a bear market at the time, the FTX collapse was days away and sentiment could not have been worse.
Related: If you invested $1,000 in Bitcoin when Satoshi created it, here's what you'd have today
Today, with Bitcoin trading at approximately $64,000, those 1.1 million coins would be worth around $70.4 billion. That is a return of 220 percent on half the original investment.
Gold was trading at approximately $1,660 per ounce in late October 2022. The remaining $22 billion would have purchased roughly 13.25 million ounces.
At today's gold price of approximately $3,300 per ounce, the metal has quietly doubled, that position is worth around $43.7 billion.
Bitcoin at $70.4 billion plus gold at $43.7 billion gives a combined total of approximately $114.1 billion, more than two and a half times the original $44 billion outlay.
Trending on TheStreet RoundtableAgainst an X valuation that has clawed back to where it started after years of advertiser exodus, layoffs, and controversy, the comparison is uncomfortable.
X is not just an investment for Musk. It is a communications platform, a political tool, and a long-term play on becoming a super-app.
The $44 billion bought him something no amount of Bitcoin or gold could, reach, influence, and a direct line to 600 million users.
The numbers favour the alternative. The strategy was never purely about the numbers.
Related: If you invested just $100 a month in Bitcoin since 2015, here's what it's worth today
