Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin - Choose Your Fighter: Musk vs. Zuck

Episode Date: June 28, 2023

For one fleeting afternoon, it seemed like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk were going to fight in a cage match. If you didn’t have this on your 2023 bingo card— yeah, us either. On today's weekly headline recap, Nicole talks about the clash of the tech bro's— plus, the latest shenanigans in crypto.

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money is working as hard as you do. So why overcomplicate your money? Keep it simple with Bank of America, your one-stop shop for everything you need today and the goals you're working toward tomorrow. To get started, visit bofa.com slash newprosmedia. That's b-o-f-a dot com slash n-e-w pros p-r-o-s media. bfa.com slash newprosmedia. I'm Nicole Lappin, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. It's time for some money rehab. It's time for some money rehab. All right, for these weekly roundups, I often return to my journalism roots and dig deep to get the real story. As a result, I spend a fair amount of time fact-checking things about Elon Musk. This is why I can verify that Musk did, in fact, say he was up for a cage match against Mark Zuckerberg.

There are screenshots of Zuck's response on Instagram telling Musk to name the place and he would meet him there, but they were deleted from Zuck's Instagram account. Possibly because a fight between these two would go in Zuckerberg's favor. When he's not running Meta, fun fact, would go in Zuckerberg's favor. When he's not running meta, fun fact, Zuckerberg famously trains in jiu-jitsu and MMA fighting. But fear not, Musk fans. Mama Musk has stepped in and called off the fight. Literally. Elon's mom, May, tweeted, actually, I canceled the fight. I haven't told them yet, but I will continue to say the fight is cancelled just in case." And Elon commented on the tweet, quote, MOM STOP IT. In all caps.

As a side note, Twitter stalking Elon's mom is honestly the most humanizing thing I've seen about Elon Musk in years or maybe ever. His mom is out there retweeting his content with cute starry-eye emojis and generally just being the tech bro version of an uber-supportive soccer mom. May Musk's Twitter feed aside, it is worth asking, what do Musk and Zuckerberg have to fight about? Now, you know when it comes to business gossip, I've got the tea for you, so let's look at some of the receipts here. In 2016, a SpaceX rocket carrying a satellite owned by Facebook failed to launch and destroyed

the satellite. Since then, Musk and Zuckerberg have not worked on a project together. And then in 2018, the Cambridge Analytics scandal broke. As a quick refresher, this was when Facebook was outed for selling user data to right-wing political groups without the user's consent. After that, Musk publicly deleted Tesla and SpaceX Facebook pages, which was some major shade. And as of this spring, Meta and Zuckerberg announced that they are working on a text-based social media app that sounds suspiciously like Twitter. The new venture could set the two CEOs on a text-based social media app that sounds suspiciously like Twitter. The new venture could set the two CEOs on a collision course for a far more interesting

fight than whatever mess would go down in the octagon. Honestly, the world might be ready for a Twitter replacement. It has been a hot mess since Musk took over, and believe it or not, Twitter narrowly escaped a worse fate. When Musk was buying Twitter, he got a message suggesting that he team up to buy Twitter with a co-star, Sam Bankman-Fried. Now the man who sent the message, Michael Kivas, is being sued by Sam Bankman-Fried's crypto exchange creditors in an attempt to claw back some of the $700 million that FTX invested with Kivas' investment firm, K5 Global. K5 did invest some of that money, notably in SpaceX and The Boring Company, both owned by Elon Musk. And unlike almost every other

investment connected to FTX, those investments have increased in value. It's also clear that what SBF was really investing in with K5 was Kivas' ability to connect him to celebrities and politicians. All those pictures and stories of SBF hanging out with Katy Perry and Leonardo DiCaprio and Bill Clinton, plus those endorsement deals with Larry David and Tom Brady, those were the result of Kivas's extensive connections in Hollywood and in Washington. Kivas had been an aide to President Clinton. Before forming his own company, he worked at CAA, Creative Artists Agency, representing high-profile clients like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis. It's not clear how seriously the courts will take the lawsuit, but it is clear that just

knowing SBF has proved embarrassing for numerous celebrities and subjected them to separate lawsuits in the wake of FTX's collapse. In more crypto dumpster fire news, it's time to talk about Luna founder Do Kwon, who has caused damage to the prospects of an entire political party in Montenegro. Let's unpack this. Montenegro started attempting to attract crypto companies and investors a few years back as part of an initiative to bring more money into the country. In what probably shouldn't be surprising news, when Montenegro attracted

crypto conferences, they also attracted some high profile crypto villains like Do Kwon. Do Kwon was one of the founders of Terraform Labs, which created the stable coin TerraUSD and its associated coin Luna. Terra turned out to be not stable at all. The two coins collapsed and erased $40 billion in gains from the crypto market. Kwon was arrested in Montenegro for trying to leave the country on a fake passport. From jail, Juan hand wrote a letter to authorities in Montenegro claiming that he had a very successful investment relationship with the leader of the Europe Now party and that others in the crypto industry had made campaign contributions in exchange for promises of policies friendly

to the crypto industry. These allegations came to light right before national elections, and the result was a dramatic drop in voter turnout. The Europe Now party barely won, and the pro-Russia party ended up getting a far larger portion of the vote than expected. While we've seen these sort of contributions for policy scandals play out across the globe the timing of this particular set of accusations and the increase in the power of the party favoring the russians is very very interesting to say the least okay one more crypto scam story this week it was revealed that high school students out for summer vacation have fished millions of dollars in NFTs,

which they've used to go on spending sprees, including buying Roblox skins, which is basically a costume for your character in the game Roblox. The story, teens commit fraud to steal collectible digital assets to buy in-game collectible digital assets is like peak scam for me. And they say that kids don't know how to work anymore. For today's tip you can take straight to the bank.

If you have a teen at home for the summer, considering opening up a Roth IRA for them, they can deposit as much as they make up to the legal limit of $6,500. So if they have a summer job scooping ice cream in the real world, you can help them set up a Roth IRA and get them set up on a path to financial security that doesn't include digital crime. Money Rehab is a production of Money News Network. I'm your host, Nicole Lappin. Money Rehab's executive producer is Morgan Loy. Our researcher is Emily Holmes. Do you need some money rehab? And let's be honest, we all do. So email us your money questions, moneyrehab at moneynewsnetwork.com to potentially have your questions answered on the show or even have a one-on-one intervention with me. And follow us on Instagram at Money News and TikTok at Money News Network for exclusive video content.

And lastly, thank you. No, seriously, thank you. Thank you for listening and for investing in yourself, which is the most important investment you can make.