Alternative hypothesis: he needed to cash out a lot of Tesla stock at (or near) the peak, without it freaking people out. Twitter was mostly just an excuse to

Alternative hypothesis: he needed to cash out a lot of Tesla stock at (or near) the peak, without it freaking people out. Twitter was mostly just an excuse to do that. If he had not had the Twitter excuse, he could not have sold as much Tesla stock without a much bigger drop in the stock. So, from his point of view, he basically got Twitter for free; if he hadn't bought it, he would have had to hold onto more Tesla stock, which would have slid in value, so the money he "spent" on Twitter was mostly just replacing money he would have "lost" as Tesla stock followed everything else down. He probably regretted it, hence the attempts to get out, or maybe that was all just because he likes attention. Regardless, he now has a Twitter, essentially at no cost to himself because if he hadn't bought Twitter with that money he would have lost it anyway as the Tesla stock slid. That doesn't mean he wants to pay anything to keep it going. So, a much smaller Twitter that is break-even is better for him than a larger one that (at least in the short term) requires him to put money in. Just an hypothesis; not sure if I even believe it myself, just putting it out there for consideration.