Such a storm cloud hangs over the minds of dedicated TikTokers at the Information's Creator Economy Summit: What if TikTok really does get banned in the United States?

While TikTok has touted its Project Texas plan to further separate the American company's operations from its Chinese parent ByteDance, the U.S. government has also proposed that ByteDance sell TikTok to an American company.

Marc D'Amelio, father of the two popular TikTok stars, Dixie and Charli D'Amelio, was another possible buyer for the Chinese app. In March, he tweeted, "I am putting together a group of investors to pursue the purchase of TikTok."

I am putting together a group of investors to pursue the purchase of TikTok.

The D'Amelios have built a media empire of their own with retail brands and a venture capital firm, but proposing to buy a platform that is estimated to be worth at least $60 billion is quite a statement. In total, ByteDance is valued at around $220 billion.

On stage at the Summit when the Information reporter Kaya Yurieff asked D'Amelio about this proposal, he said it's not quite on the table anymore. That's no surprise — it's hard to casually toss around tens of billions of dollars, and even if that weren't the case, China made sure the U.S. remembered it can't actually compel a sale. And when the matriarch of TikTok's "first family" was leaned on about this offer, she revealed she had thought about it as a viable option.

It's really expensive," D'Amelio told Yurieff. But the strategy went a little more than just some tweet with a hashtag. "We've raised quite a bit of money for D'Amelio Brands, and we have the relationships in order to do it," he said. At the end of the day, though, D'Amelio believes the best thing that can happen is if the U.S. never even attempts any legislation to do with banning TikTok.

D'Amelio Brands launched in September with $6 million in seed funding, which is a little short of the cost of TikTok. The company perhaps has raised some other undisclosed capital, but that would not be near enough to take that serious run at buying the app; this is why D'Amelio sought additional investors.

So while Charli D'Amelio might be the queen of TikTok, it appears her family can't buy it literally.