A new social media network was launched and exploded in popularity. Both controversial and game changing. This is Bitclout, a platform that could change social media landscape and the way they work.
Bitclout is a Twitter clone running on a custom Bitcoin blockchain and has its own coin called BTCLT. The 7 pages whitepaper explains the basic stuff.
It's probably the reason for the sudden rise of many crypto social tokens price and Coingecko even updated their website to make it easier to find social and creator tokens.
The idea? Take popular Twitter profiles and add a dollar value. People can then buy and sell the so called “Creator Coins” with Bitcoin and potentially earn money.
The platform was coincidentally opened to the public one week after TryRoll was hacked.Until then it was more difficult to sign up and was known only to insiders. People had to verify their Twitter profile in order to register. And that was done with a tweet, slowly leading to massive free marketing campaign.
Roll has been in the Crypto business for some time but they became popular when they changed their business plan allowing users to create their own social token. In the middle of the NFT craze, a lot of creators, celebrities and wannabes embraced it. Users can buy their tokens as investment or in order to get privileged access to a group, ask a question etc.
Bitclout is a little different. First of all the team preloaded 15.000 most popular Twitter accounts in order to 'protect them'. Some of these profiles already signed up on Bitclout, others not. And some are not very happy when discovered that their names were used without permission.
The most popular name or coin as Bitclout calls them is non other than Elon Musk. Although he didn't register, users can still buy and sell his coin.
You can't turn those coins in real money right now but Bitclout says it will get listed on some exchanges soon. They also say that companies like Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, Coinbase Ventures, Winklevoss Capital and a host of celebrities are supporting the Project and have invested millions of dollars.
In order to buy their name users must buy Bitclout coins sending Bitcoin. The wallet where the money goes has already 200 million dollars and some of the money is being sent to exchanges.
The platform in theory can be used for price speculation, user engagement reputation score, giving tips, monetize content and targeted advertising among others.
There is also a lot of speculation and mystique about who is the creator, but some of the people who have threatened with legal actions are pointing to one man, Nader Al-Naji (aka nadertheory).He is not a well known figure to the general public but has been involved for years in the Crypto space. Worked for Google in the past and created Basis.
There is a lot of scepticism and questions about the possibility of being a scam. And although Bitclout says to be in favour of decentralisation (as all Crypto companies claim) there are some things that show otherwise.
We will see if Bitclout will change social media for ever or go down by the same people it is trying to attract. But I believe that we will see plenty of clones in the upcoming weeks and months.
