Musk in latest months has tossed out numerous concepts about how crypto tokens and ideologies is perhaps helpful on Twitter, inflicting fanatics to consider he’ll assist take their mind-set mainstream.
However what can Musk really do with cryptocurrency on the platform? The Submit examined his many statements on the topic, then spoke to crypto regulators, watchdogs and content material creators to evaluate each their feasibility and potential impression.
He desires to defeat crypto scams.
Musk stated at a TED Speak in Vancouver this yr that he noticed stopping crypto scams as vastly vital.
“A prime precedence I’d have is eliminating the spam and rip-off bots and the bot armies which can be on Twitter,” he stated in regards to the website. “If I had a dogecoin for each crypto rip-off I noticed, we’d have 100 billion dogecoin.” (Twitter and Tesla spokespeople didn’t reply to requests looking for remark from Musk.)
Of the greater than $1 billion misplaced to crypto scams for the reason that begin of final yr, watchdogs say a big chunk has been misplaced through Twitter scams — a few of them bizarrely involving impersonations of Musk himself.
Musk has but to announce what instruments he’d use to realize his purpose. However regulators who’ve tried laborious to resolve this drawback don’t 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, stated in a textual content message to The Submit. “If Mr. Musk is ready to considerably curb crypto scams in Twitter, he’ll have achieved one thing that many know-how professionals take into account not possible.”
He thinks dogecoin can be utilized for Twitter transactions.
Although 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 information first surfaced that he would possibly purchase Twitter, he even suggested {that a} Blue premium subscription might be purchased in doge.
Dogecoin’s worth has doubled since Musk started formalizing his buy of Twitter, and after he tweeted an image of doge mascot-breed Shiba Inu in a Twitter shirt.
Technical specialists have famous that the concept of bringing doge to Twitter is believable on condition that its transactions can occur a lot quicker than bitcoin, whose sluggish price of transaction has inhibited adoption. However it’s unclear what precisely Musk’s Twitter can be promoting. (The positioning does presently permit “ideas” in bitcoin.) And whereas dogecoin can course of transactions quicker than bitcoin, conventional types of fee like Visa can course of them a whole lot of occasions quicker than doge.
He desires looser content material moderation, which might enhance crypto voices.
Customers on crypto Twitter — the parts of the location the place giant numbers of individuals share ideas and, usually, troll one another — have lengthy expressed the assumption that the system can punish them. That’s notably 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’ll take a looser method to content material moderation. Musk informed advertisers final week that his Twitter can be a spot “the place a variety of beliefs will be debated in a wholesome method.” On Tuesday, Binance chief government and Musk ally Changpeng Zhao stated this pledge prolonged to crypto.
“Twitter is a city sq. for crypto, and many of the world’s scorching matters, so it’s a very good place to help free speech,” he informed Yahoo Finance Dwell.
Whereas 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 stated they didn’t change POLICIES, however they absolutely did take away some BANS,” PlanB posted. “Learn the a whole lot of people that touch upon my earlier tweet and who can once more see my tweets after 9 months of nothing.”
In a message to The Submit, PlanB stated he thinks Twitter “simply stopped displaying my tweets to my very own followers.”
He desires to run Twitter extra like crypto.
A central tenet of the crypto world is that establishments will be run in a extra decentralized method, with a big neighborhood making collective selections as a substitute of a top-down government construction. Each bitcoin and ethereum operate kind of this manner.
In textual content messages to Twitter founder Jack Dorsey earlier this yr, Musk famous that he’d prefer to remake the platform into “one thing new that’s decentralized.”
Might that truly occur?
Some within the crypto world consider it might. “There was point out of a governance group filled with disparate thinkers. This can be a good first step,” Alanna Roazzi-Laforet, founding father of Decrypt Studios and writer of Decrypt Media, stated in a message to The Submit. “Subsequent is … a governance token and a plan to convey governance energy to the neighborhood,” she stated, citing Krishnan because the determine who might press for it.
However critics aren’t persuaded.
“Twitter is rarely going to be ruled meaningfully” by a decentralized drive, stated crypto skeptic David Gerard in his personal message to The Submit. “Musk is the proprietor. I’d be amazed if he ever let anybody have efficient management. He’s Elon Musk!”
He might reverse Twitter’s pro-NFT stance.
You might have seen NFTs, the non-fungible tokens that watermark a picture to at least one consumer, pop up as Twitter profile photos. 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’re all only a psychiatric patient’s hallucination. And Musk actually didn’t just like the Twitter coverage. In January, he tweeted: “Twitter is spending engineering assets on this … whereas crypto scammers are throwing a spambot block celebration in each thread!?”
Musk might 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 may facilitate NFT gross sales off the location.