Musk in latest months has tossed out a lot of concepts about how crypto tokens and ideologies may be helpful on Twitter, inflicting lovers to consider he’ll assist take their mind-set mainstream.
But what can Musk truly do with cryptocurrency on the platform? The Post examined his many statements on the topic, then spoke to crypto regulators, watchdogs and content material creators to evaluate each their feasibility and potential affect.
Musk mentioned at a TED Talk in Vancouver this 12 months that he noticed stopping crypto scams as massively vital.
“A top priority I would have is eliminating the spam and scam bots and the bot armies that are on Twitter,” he mentioned concerning the website. “If I had a dogecoin for every crypto scam I saw, we’d have 100 billion dogecoin.” (Twitter and Tesla spokespeople didn’t reply to requests searching for remark from Musk.)
Of the greater than $1 billion misplaced to crypto scams for the reason that begin of final 12 months, watchdogs say a massive chunk has been misplaced by way of Twitter scams — a few of them bizarrely involving impersonations of Musk himself.
Musk has but to announce what instruments he’d use to attain his aim. But regulators who’ve tried arduous to resolve this drawback do not consider he can ship on his promise, saying that no tech can forestall scammers from tweeting.
“I’m naturally skeptical,” Joe Rotunda, enforcement director on the Texas Securities Board, mentioned in a textual content message to The Post. “If Mr. Musk is able to significantly curb crypto scams in Twitter, he’ll have accomplished something that many technology professionals consider impossible.”
He thinks dogecoin can be used for Twitter transactions.
Though dogecoin was designed again in 2013 as a sarcastic commentary on crypto, Musk has labored with doge builders and thinks the token is “pretty cool.” When news first surfaced that he might buy Twitter, he even suggested that a Blue premium subscription could be bought in doge.
Dogecoin’s value has doubled since Musk began formalizing his purchase of Twitter, and after he tweeted a picture of doge mascot-breed Shiba Inu in a Twitter shirt,
Technical experts have noted that the idea of bringing doge to Twitter is plausible given that its transactions can happen much faster than bitcoin, whose slow rate of transaction has inhibited adoption. But it’s unclear what exactly Musk’s Twitter would be selling. (The site does currently allow “tips” in bitcoin.) And whereas dogecoin can course of transactions sooner than bitcoin, conventional types of cost like Visa can course of them tons of of instances sooner than doge.
He desires looser content material moderation, which may increase crypto voices.
Users on crypto Twitter — the parts of the positioning the place massive numbers of individuals share suggestions and, typically, troll one another — have lengthy expressed the assumption that the system can punish them. That’s significantly true with shadow bans, which is when the algorithm limits how a lot different customers see their posts.
Musk and different leaders of the brand new Twitter say they will take a looser method to content material moderation. Musk instructed advertisers final week that his Twitter could be a place “where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner.” On Tuesday, Binance chief govt and Musk ally Changpeng Zhao mentioned this pledge prolonged to crypto.
“Twitter is a town square for crypto, and most of the world’s hot topics, so it’s a good place to support free speech,” he instructed Yahoo Finance Live.
While customers on crypto Twitter famous that Musk has yet to change content-moderation insurance policies, some crypto influencers say they discover a distinction. PlanB, a controversial bitcoin influencer, tweeted this week that his account appears to be getting extra visibility since Musk’s takeover.
“Elon said they did not change policies, but they surely did remove some BANS,” PlanB posted. “Read the hundreds of people who comment on my earlier tweet and who can again see my tweets after 9 months of nothing.”
In a message to The Post, PlanB mentioned he thinks Twitter “just stopped showing my tweets to my own followers.”
He desires to run Twitter extra like crypto.
A central tenet of the crypto world is that establishments could be run in a extra decentralized method, with a massive group making collective selections as a substitute of a top-down govt construction. Both bitcoin and ethereum operate roughly this fashion.
In textual content messages to Twitter founder Jack Dorsey earlier this 12 months, Musk famous that he’d wish to remake the platform into “something new that’s decentralized.”
Could that really occur?
Some within the crypto world consider it may. “There was mention of a governance group full of disparate thinkers. This is a good first step,” Alanna Roazzi-Laforet, founding father of Decrypt Studios and writer of Decrypt Media, mentioned in a message to The Post. “Next is … a governance token and a plan to bring governance power to the community,” she mentioned, citing Krishnan because the determine who may press for it.
But the critics aren’t persuaded.
“Twitter is never going to be governed meaningfully” by a decentralized power, mentioned crypto skeptic David Gerard in his personal message to The Post. “Musk is the proprietor. I’d be amazed if he ever let anyone have effective control. He’s Elon Musk!”
He may reverse Twitter’s pro-NFT stance.
You could have seen NFTs, the non-fungible tokens that watermark a picture to 1 person, pop up as Twitter profile footage. That’s as a result of in January Twitter policymakers allowed customers to hyperlink their NFTs to their wallets.
Musk has been a public critic of NFTs, insinuating in a meme that they are all simply a Psychiatric patient’s hallucination. And Musk actually did not just like the Twitter coverage. In January, he tweeted: “Twitter is spending engineering resources on this … while crypto scammers are throwing a spambot block party in every thread!?”
Musk could have to act on his beliefs quickly: As he was getting ready to take over Twitter, the corporate’s developer account announced it will roll out a “tweet Tiles” characteristic that can facilitate NFT gross sales off the positioning.