I must admit that in 2025, the velocity of change to technology, human communication, business, politics, and society has gone from breakneck speed to lightning speed.
The type of speed is unsettling to many who aren’t willing to bend their lives and every twist and turn. That type of adaptability and awareness is hard to find in many people.
What is this about?
The Chinese are suddenly considering selling social media app TikTok to Elon Musk and the app is also facing a Sunday blanket ban in the United States.
Yes, the very Elon Musk who has successfully sold at least 2 or 4 Teslas to every coastal Democrat then only to become their arch-enemy number 1 after those purchases.
If Musk gets his grubby little fingers on TikTok, he will possess a de-facto media monopoly on the whole world.
X.com is the biggest source of information in the United States, Japan, and many other countries rich or poor.
This acquisition would also madly accelerate the death of legacy media which lost half their audience last year, because of the decrease in content quality.
TikTok is the app that consumers under 30 use, meaning that Musk would now be able to spread his influence even deeper to the younger crowd. None of this cohort even knows what cable TV is or what is on it.
Imagine how many job losses to digital shops on TikTok – perhaps in the 100s of thousands alone if the app gets banned. They are mostly mom-and-pop shops selling small goods and their audience will go to 0 if the app is removed. Think about a college kid selling bouncy balls on this platform - many shops are entirely run on TikTok. This would be another win for the billionaires and a crushing blow to America’s youth.
The Supreme Court could shortly ban TikTok in the United States and the Chinese are debating on whether the least bad option is to sell it to Musk.
Musk already owns and operates the Shanghai Gigafactory.
TikTok’s US operations could be valued at around $80 billion.
Musk paid $44 billion for Twitter in 2022 and is still paying off sizable loans, but in hindsight, the $44 billion price is a huge bargain in 2025 valuation terms.
On a practical level, spinning off TikTok’s US business would be highly complex, affecting shareholders in China as well as the US.
In one of the greatest trades of all time, Musk turned a $250 million investment into the Trump Campaign and applied his leverage on X.com to catapult Tesla’s stock from $600 billion of market cap to $1.3 trillion today.
The almost $700 billion increase in market cap shows no signs of slowing down and if Musk is able to grab TikTok, then watch out, I believe Tesla will be a $2 trillion stock by the summer of 2026.
The German American Venture Capitalist Peter Theil famously said to never bet against Musk no matter what, and those words couldn’t ring truer today.
Buy the dip in any meaningful Tesla weakness and as X.com starts to build clout, I believe Musk will also take his social media platforms public reaping another massive payday in the many billions. Musk owning TikTok would supercharge the asset appreciation in his digital media empire.
