Since we have been speaking about postponements, once again the President signed an Executive Order giving TikTok (pvt) another 75 day extension to finalize a deal to remove itself from its Chinese owners.  One might remember that the first 75 day extension came on Trump’s inauguration day when the original ban (Biden) and Congressional actions were to go into effect.  The President recently stated, “The Deal requires more work to ensure all necessary approvals are signed, which is why I am signing an Executive Order to keep TikTok up and running for an additional 75 days.”, as his initial extension was to expire on April 5.
That said, it seems that while the WH hints that at least four groups are currently under consideration to purchase the app, which is used by over 170m Americans, there has been little about who might be high in the running.  At one point last year it was thought that Oracle (ORCL) might be close to a deal, but the Chinese government indicated it would not approve the Ellison deal at that time.  Since then Frank McCourt, former owner of the LA Dodgers, has been mentioned, as well as Perplexity AI (pvt), a variety of VCs and private funders, and more recently Amazon (AMZN), who has been trying to build a media presence (Bought Goodreads (pvt) in 2013 and Twitch (pvt) in 2014), but recently closed their short-form platform ‘Inspire” after ~2 years.
While the most recent postponement, which is again in violation of the congressional law (Trump promised not to prosecute those involved), is delaying the finality of a deal, there still seem to be a few loose (very loose) ends that are keeping things up in the air.  Trump fired David Feith, the Senior Director for Technology & National Security at the National Security Council, who was a key negotiator in the TikTok deal, which set back the conversations with the Chinese government, and even more recently the additional tariffs placed on Chinese imports cooled negotiations even further.  That said, even more recently another bidder seems to have appeared, and while the US government might not take this new bidder seriously, he certainly has credentials.
The new bidder is Only Fans (pvt) porn site founder Tim Stokely, who sold a 75% stake in the site in 2018 (sales of $6.6b in 2023).  Along with the HBAR Foundation (pvt), who runs the Hedera block-chain network, Stokely is looking to create another profit-sharing model like Only Fans, where those willing to post explicit videos are able to rake in thousands a day for a popular pay channel.  Hopefully the administration will not take the Stokely bid seriously, as the potential for such a model to destroy the public value of TikTok is quite high, but there is still another stumbling block that we see as an even greater risk to any potential TikTok deal.
As the Chinese government has to approve the sale, the current atmosphere between the Trump administration and the Chinese government is a bit tense, and we expect the Chinese government will try to use TikTok to gain some leverage in the tariff debacle.  Trump can easily hold out with this most recent extension, but as such a high visibility deal, it will become embarrassing to  extend it again, especially if existing tariffs continue to put excessive pressure on the US economy. 
We expect the Chinese government will use the TikTok deal as a negotiating tool, but as China seems to be the easiest target for Trump’s ‘Big Stick’ agenda,  we don’t believe the deal leverage has much chance of making an appreciable difference in trade negotiations.  That means either no TikTok deal and a shutdown, which would be an embarrassment to the administration, or some concession on the US side, likely something easily buried in the publicity rhetoric that would surround a deal.  (“…we saved TikTok for the good of America”.  It has become a messy situation that has gotten even messier with the Stokely bid, but there are bigger things to worry about than TikTok at the moment, at least until the middle of June when the deal is slated to be completed.  As long as Stokely’s bid is not accepted, TikTok lives on, despite the efforts of the government to ‘protect’ our TikTok videos from being seen by the Chinese government…
https://www.tiktok.com/@creamycanoli/video/7350849230010928430?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc
https://www.tiktok.com/@biogenesis__/video/7478422860545969430?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc
https://www.tiktok.com/@shiverchain/video/7468920864952552726?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pcc
https://www.tiktok.com/@wufudufu/video/7253693814928379178?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc
These are all real TikTok videos…don’t let anyone in the Chinese government see them!
​

The US government’s ban on TikTok (pvt) has resulted in a high-stakes poker game that involves the US Supreme Court, the incoming President, one of the largest companies in China, and at the tail end of the chain, lots of US citizens.  The Chinese company ByteDance (pvt) has said that if the US Supreme Court does not intervene, it will shut down the TikTok app in the US on Sunday, January 19, with some foreign commentary stating that “Americans may face unemployment and plummeting incomes, and the US new economy will collapse overnight” if the shutdown occurs.  Underlying those radical statements comes the concept that 5 million small and medium sized US businesses use TikTok to promote their products.
We doubt the potential ban of TikTok would presume financial collapse in the US and ByteDance has already (Since early 2023) cloned TikTok with Lemon8. While its user base is only a small fraction of that of TikTok, TikTok influencers have been pointing to the Lemon8 app as the ‘place to go’ if TikTok is shut down.  Unfortunately, as ByteDance is the owner of Lemon8, it could fall pray to the same US regulations that are causing the TikTok issues, but as it has not been explicitly named, it might be able to either dance around the rules or wind up in the maelstrom of courtroom battles for years.
President Trump holds the cards currently, as he has the potential to use an executive order to postpone the potential ban and is adept at using the courts to cause things to grind to a halt if he so desires, so if it seems that the ban might leave a stain on the early days of the new administration, the odds are that a compromise will be reached and the US economy and its cadre of TikTok users will not permanently be denied an endless supply of videos about pretty much anything.  The three most popular on TikTok now are “Laura B. Healthy promoting a good breakfast and her relationship with Nature’s Bounty”, a very nice guy cutting the lawn for a very old lady (for free), and a promotion for Saturday Night Live.  If being unable to view those collapses the US economy our economic system is a bit flawed.