Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Wednesday, January 15th.

Today on Forbes, the fate of TikTok is with the Supreme Court, and could Elon Musk buy it?

Earlier this week, Bloomberg, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter, reported that

Chinese government officials have considered selling

TikTok's U.S. operations to Elon Musk if the Supreme Court does not stop a ban from going

through on January 19th.

Though the people noted the deliberations are preliminary and that Chinese officials prefer

to keep TikTok under the ownership of China-based developer BightDance. Meanwhile, when

asked about the Bloomberg report, BytDance told Forbes, it, quote, can't be expected to comment

on pure fiction. The world's richest person would likely be looking at a price tag similar to what

he paid for Twitter. Wedbush analyst Dan Ives wrote in a Tuesday note to clients, the TikTok parent bite dance

would likely look for a sum of $40 to $50 billion for the U.S. operations of the hit app.

In the range of the $44 billion, Musk paid in 2022 for Twitter, now known as X, and well above the roughly $20 billion bid made

by the U.S.-led consortium Project Liberty last week.

Until any sale is confirmed, though, the fate of TikTok in the United States rests with

the Supreme Court.

When Congress passed the law that required TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, to sell it

or see it banned in the U.S., it was partially motivated by the fear that the Chinese government

might use TikTok to contort Americans' discourse, pitting people against one another, and eroding

their trust in the democratic systems that define American politics.

Last Friday, at the Supreme Court oral argument that will determine TikTok's fate,

Chief Justice John Roberts made a joke underlining this risk.

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