Musk in current months has tossed out numerous concepts about how crypto tokens and ideologies is perhaps helpful on Twitter, inflicting fanatics to imagine he’ll assist take their mind-set mainstream.
But what can Musk really 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 influence.
He desires to defeat crypto scams.
Musk mentioned at a TED Talk in Vancouver this 12 months that he noticed stopping crypto scams as vastly vital.
“A top priority I would have is eliminating the spam and scam bots and the bot armies that are on Twitter,” he mentioned in regards to the web site. “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 in search of remark from Musk.)
Of the greater than $1 billion misplaced to crypto scams because the begin of final 12 months, watchdogs say a big 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 exhausting to resolve this drawback don’t imagine he can ship on his promise, saying that no tech can stop 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 utilized 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 information first surfaced that he would possibly purchase Twitter, he even instructed {that a} Blue premium subscription could possibly 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 consultants have famous that the concept of bringing doge to Twitter is believable provided that its transactions can occur a lot quicker than bitcoin, whose sluggish fee of transaction has inhibited adoption. But it’s unclear what precisely Musk’s Twitter can be promoting. (The web site does presently enable “tips” in bitcoin.) And whereas dogecoin can course of transactions quicker than bitcoin, conventional types of cost like Visa can course of them a whole bunch of occasions quicker 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 idea 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 instructed advertisers final week that his Twitter can be a spot “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 but to alter 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 might be run in a extra decentralized method, with a big neighborhood making collective selections as a substitute of a top-down govt construction. Both bitcoin and ethereum perform roughly this manner.
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 truly occur?
Some within the crypto world imagine 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 critics aren’t persuaded.
“Twitter is never going to be governed meaningfully” by a decentralized drive, 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 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 affected person’s hallucination. And Musk actually didn’t 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 introduced it could roll out a “tweet Tiles” function that may facilitate NFT gross sales off the positioning.