- Binance CEO Changpeng "CZ" Zhao said he anticipates about 90% of Elon Musk's ideas for Twitter will fail.
- Zhao said the best way to improve Twitter is to define new features and see what sticks.
Binance CEO Changpeng "CZ" Zhao said he expects about 90% of Elon Musk's new ideas for Twitter features will fail.
Zhao — whose company invested $500 million in Musk's acquisition, an effort largely driven by his support of free speech — said at the Web Summit tech conference in Lisbon on Tuesday that he believes "not all" of the newly proposed Twitter features will prove successful.
"I would actually say probably the majority of them will not stick," Zhao said, adding that he does believe Musk will eventually settle on some fruitful ideas for the social media platform as he speeds up innovation at the company.
"That's how you figure out the rest of the 10% of the features that will stick," he said. "By defining a lot of new features."
Since officially taking over Twitter on Thursday, Musk has proposed several new ideas for the platform — from bringing back Vine to charging users $8 per month for Twitter's blue check mark verification, as well as other premium features. Most recently, The Washington Post reported that the social media company had started working on a feature that would allow creators to charge users for watching their videos.
The proposed changes have prompted criticism from some users. On Monday, several celebrities — including Shonda Rhimes and Sara Bareilles — said they planned to leave the site due to the takeover and Musk's stance as a self-proclaimed "free speech absolutist."
The same day, Stephen King said he would leave the platform if Musk instituted a $20 per month fee for users to keep their verified status on Twitter.
Despite the recent upheaval, Zhao said he's "not bothered by short term" issues at Twitter. The Binance CEO said Musk has been a "hard guy to predict" over the past few months, noting he was "surprised" when Musk made a U-turn on his decision to buy Twitter after months of litigation.
"I heard about the blue tick for a while, but I learned about the $8 thing at the same time you did," Zhao said, calling the feature a "great idea."
Ultimately, Zhao said he supports Musk's vision for Twitter when it comes to promoting free speech and modeling the platform as a type of "global town square."
"Twitter plus Elon? Independently, they have a lot of potential, but combined, there is such high potential," CZ said at the Lisbon event.
He added; "10 to 20 years from now, we're very confident that this will be a much stronger platform than Twitter yesterday."