The banks loaned Elon the money using a number of his assets as collateral. I never was quite interested enough to dig all the way into it, but from my light reading he saddled twitter with $13B in debt which he needs to be paying the interest on - this driving twitter from economically viable if not actually turning a profit into a dark hole in the internet into which Elon must pour money. That’s one reason he’s freaking out and acting like a maniacal idiot by firing like 80% of twitter and pulling moves with paid verification and such. He thinks it should be an easy project and can’t figure out why reality isn’t conforming to his will.

He also has some Saudis and Jack Dorsey with a combined holding of $3B (which is now about $1B, one would assume).

Elon buying twitter will go down as the finest example of fractal stupidity we’ve ever seen - rivaled only by Trump and Company, and then only if the prosecutions come through. Every stupid move is made up of equally stupid smaller moves and in turn serves even more stupid larger moves.