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When a mega-billionaire like Elon Musk, newly replete with over $3 billion of cash, follows an entity on Twitter, the speculative mania and rumor mill go on overdrive; such is the way of the world right now. Today, the crypto exchange OKX is on the receiving end of a fervent speculative exercise following a quasi-endorsement of sorts from the CEO of Tesla.
To wit, Elon Musk is now following the Twitter account of OKX.
Elon Musk suddenly followed the official Twitter account of OKX, the only cryptocurrency exchange account that he followed. While Binance backed Musk’s $500 million acquisition of Twitter, Musk has not followed Binance or CZ’s Twitter account. pic.twitter.com/OtWTqcbXdB
— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) December 16, 2022
This is highly unusual for a number of reasons. Firstly, Elon Musk managed to secure $500 million in equity commitments from the crypto exchange Binance for his Twitter takeover deal. However, this contribution was apparently not sufficient to entice Musk to follow Binance's Twitter account. In fact, OKX is the only crypto exchange that Musk follows on Twitter at the moment.
Secondly, just yesterday, Elon Musk disclosed that he sold 21.995 million Tesla shares over the past few days, netting $3.58 billion in the process. Since the purpose behind Musk's latest liquidation spree is shrouded in secrecy at the moment, this obfuscation is fueling the speculation that the CEO of Tesla and the interim CEO of Twitter might be mulling over the acquisition of OKX.
You can now trade $FLOKI on leading #crypto exchange #OKX!
FLOKI/USDT and FLOKI/USDC Spot trading pairs are live and tradable.
Register to trade #FLOKI on #OKX by using the link below (or watching the tutorial):https://t.co/1sqBSs1tbx https://t.co/MmAr84xC7I pic.twitter.com/AuSmPIT9Qu
— FLOKI (@RealFlokiInu) December 16, 2022
Thirdly, Elon Musk's following of OKX comes at a time when the exchange has just listed the Floki Inu token – a Dogecoin competitor. This has predictably energized Floki Inu bulls. For the uninitiated, Floki Inu traces its roots to June 2021 when Elon Musk tweeted his intention to acquire Floki, a Shiba Inu puppy. Floki Inu's developers sensed a historic opportunity to capitalize on the meme coin trend by launching another dog-inspired cryptocurrency. The project claims that it is affiliated with the Million Gardens Movement, a charitable initiative that is being spearheaded by Elon Musk's brother, Kimball Musk.
According to Bloomberg, the auditor Mazars has suspended all services including proof of reserves for cryptocurrency exchanges, and its clients include Binance KuCoin Cryptocom and others. The AUP engagement provided by Mazars is widely misused as an “audit”.
— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) December 16, 2022
Of course, centralized crypto exchanges (CEXs) are not the safest investment venues right now following the collapse of FTX, which has unleashed an unprecedented demand for transparency from investors. In fact, Binance and other CEXs tried to satisfy this growing chorus for transparency by publishing their proof-of-reserves statements. Binance had gone a step further by tasking Mazars to perform an "audit" of its reserves. The auditor's press statement, however, flagged the limited nature of its engagement with Binance, one that precluded the process of obtaining any actual "evidence" that would have allowed the auditor to form an opinion. Significantly, Binance's proof-of-reserves attestation glossed over the exchange's liabilities. This controversy has now prompted Mazars to abandon any engagement with crypto entities.
For its part, OKX also tried to introduce greater transparency by publishing its on-chain holdings on Nansen, making public its Merkle Tree-based proof-of-reserves, and launching a self-audit feature. Nonetheless, it remains unclear whether Elon Musk is even considering the acquisition of OKX at this stage, barring frivolous conjecture that will likely continue until further clarity is afforded on Musk's intentions. In the meantime, investors looking to front-run possible moves by Elon Musk – either by pumping up OKX's native token or buying Floki Inu coins – should exercise extreme caution as the likelihood of any of these eventualities materializing is very slim at this stage, especially as Musk still faces a $258 billion lawsuit for allegedly running a pyramid scheme in relation to Dogecoin.
