Patrick Boyle enters the conversation with a premise that's hard to ignore: Elon Musk's 54.20 per share bid for Twitter is probably not serious — and the joke itself might be the entire point.
The piece opens by translating internet humor that most readers won't get without help. "420 is a pot smoking reference," Boyle writes, "that in the real world isn't funny but it's really hilarious if you're either a 15 year old boy or a tech billionaire." This matters because understanding why Musk chose this number tells you something about how he approaches public announcements — as performance rather than negotiation. The only thing funnier than 420 is of course the number 69, and Boyle knows his audience well enough not to explain that one.
The Financing Question
The most substantive analysis centers on whether Musk can actually pay for Twitter. When asked at a Ted conference if he had funding secured, "he replied I have sufficient assets and what that basically means is no." This is the piece's sharpest observation: the phrase itself is code for lack of commitment. The offer is contingent on completion of anticipated financing — meaning Musk can back out if conditions change, while investors face genuine uncertainty about whether he'll complete the deal.
Boyle frames this through market mechanics rather than narrative drama. "The price action in the stock implies that market participants are not really taking this deal seriously" and "they don't believe he can close the deal." The stock trading well below the bid price tells you what Wall Street actually thinks — and it's skepticism, not enthusiasm.
How Musk Could Fund It
The analysis of financing options is thorough. Selling Tesla stock to raise 40 billion would require disposing of over 50 billion in shares due to tax implications. "This would likely push down the price of Tesla stock both because of the large stock sale but more so because it would signal to the market that he had lost interest in Tesla." The margin loan option faces similar obstacles: he's already pledged over half his Tesla shares, and banks are nervous about taking volatile tech shares as collateral. "It's also a very expensive stock meaning that it could fall a lot making it very unattractive as collateral for a lender."
The piece acknowledges one potential backstop — Apollo Global was considering providing debt or preferred equity funding — but even this is hedged: it's not equity, and the firm would want returns Musk has explicitly said he doesn't care about.
The Poison Pill Defense
Twitter's poison pill implementation gets detailed treatment. Boyle explains how it works with precision: "if anyone builds a stake of let's say 15% of the company stock, the company then distributes one free share of stock for each existing share except to the person who went above 15%, so everyone else's share count gets doubled, knocking the raider's percentage stake down to seven and a half percent." This is effective because it shows exactly how shareholders protect themselves — and why boards can decline offers without breaching fiduciary duty.
But Boyle also identifies something more troubling about Musk's approach. "A chunk of musk's stock purchases were done illegally — he was required to disclose his ownership stake by March 24th but didn't disclose it until April 4th, and then he claimed to be a passive investor at that point." This delay allowed him to buy an extra 13 million shares at a lower price "than he would have paid had he announced on time" — costing shareholders who sold as much as 150 million dollars. The framing is careful: this isn't just bad strategy, it's potentially actionable misconduct.
Corporate Law Reality Check
The piece clarifies how boards actually work. Governors like Ron DeSantis threatened to pursue Twitter's board for fiduciary duty violations, but "company boards are not actually obliged to just accept every bid that comes in above the current share price or to even let the shareholders decide." The legal standard is whether keeping the company independent would be worth more to shareholders than accepting the offer — and Twitter's poison pill suggests they believe it will be.
Musk has already announced that he doesn't care about the economics at all.
This single sentence captures why the deal looks like performance art. A buyer with actual financing would see stock trading closer to the bid price; instead, investors are treating 54.20 as roughly equivalent to dumping shares — which is exactly what happens when a bid isn't serious.
Bottom Line
Boyle's strongest contribution is exposing how Musk's offer works as a punchline rather than a transaction. The 54.20 figure isn't just quirky — it's designed to make stoners laugh, and the financing strategy has no credible path forward. What makes this piece work is not that it calls the deal fake, but that it explains why the market treats it as such: because serious money requires serious commitment, and Musk has offered neither.
The biggest vulnerability here is whether Boyle's playful tone — necessary for a video format — might obscure how genuinely unprecedented this situation is. A billionaire using acquisition announcements as performance art while holding illegal stakes in the company he wants to buy represents something new under the sun, even if the financing falls through.