Elon’s Twitter Take Over , A Win Or An Acheules Heel?
South African business man and tech mogul Elon Musk is unabashedly a fan of cryptocurrency. It is said that his company, Tesla, once held nearly $2 billion in bitcoin before selling a bunch of it. He is also famously known for his tweets often about dogecoin.
Now the mogul seems to be bringing that enthusiasm and zest to Twitter. Musk happened to secure $500 million from the crypto exchange Binance to finance his new acquisition and hired influential Andreesen Horowitz crypto investor and former Twitter executive Sriram Krishnan to come back to Twitter as part of his new team.
Musk in recent weeks and months has dished out a lot of ideas and inklings on how cryptocurrency tokens and ideologies might be useful on the bird app Twitter, causing enthusiasts to believe he’ll help take their way of thinking mainstream.
That being said , one really wonders what Musk can actually do with cryptocurrency on the platform? First off in his list I feel will be his urge and wish to defeat crypto scams.
Musk once said at a TED Talk in Vancouver, Canada this year that he saw putting an end to crypto scams as hugely important.His top priority even before fully acquiring Twitter is eliminating the presence of spam and scam bots and the bot armies that are on Twitter. I recall him saying if he had a dogecoin for every crypto scam he saw, we’d have 100 billion dogecoin, wild !!
More than $1 billion was lost to crypto scams since the start of last year. Crypto analysts and watchdogs say a large chunk of the money lost has been via Twitter scams ;some of them bizarrely and awkwardly involving impersonations of Musk himself.
Musk however has yet to announce what tools he’d use to achieve this salient goal of his . For facts sake , regulators who’ve tried hard to solve this problem don’t believe he can deliver on his promise, saying that no tech can prevent scammers from tweeting.
Honestly, if at all Elon Musk is able to significantly curb crypto scams on Twitter, he’ll have accomplished something that many technology professionals consider impossible .
To be honest, one attribute of Elon Musk I find admirable is the petty and subtle ways he maintains his stance as to whatever policies he formulates regardless of agitations and mockery by those who don’t agree with his policies .
Recently, Twitter's app in Apple's App Store was updated on Saturday to begin charging $8 for the sought-after blue check verification marks, in Elon Musk's first major revision of the social media platform.
Musk's decision is now being debated across the internet. Elon Musk and New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez even had a war of words about it a few days ago.
Before one could say Jack Robinson , Elon Musk again shared a post without attaching any text to the photo of a T-shirt, leaving the microblogging users in splits.
When Mr Musk posted a photo of a t-shirt with the letterings , "Your feedback is appreciated, now pay $8," taking a dig at New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Twitter CEO received a question from former Democratic Party candidate and writer Heidi Briones about the new blue tick fees.
Musk firmly believes dogecoin can be used for Twitter transactions.
Dogecoin was initially designed back then as a sarcastic commentary on crypto, Musk has worked with doge developers 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.
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.
That being said it’s unclear what exactly Musk’s Twitter would be selling. While dogecoin can process transactions faster than bitcoin, traditional forms of payment like Visa can process them hundreds of times faster than doge.
Content moderation which could boost crypto voices is another cause Musk seems to be fighting for .Users on crypto Twitter which by happens to be the portions of the site where large numbers of people share tips and, often, troll each other have long expressed the belief that the system can punish them. That’s particularly true with shadow bans, which is when the algorithm limits how much other users see their posts.
Musk and other leaders of the new Twitter say they’ll take a looser approach to content moderation. As regards the advertising world for example Musk claims his Twitter would be a place that accommodates a wide spectrum and range of beliefs that can be debated , argued in a healthy manner.
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.While users on crypto Twitter noted that Musk has yet to change content-moderation policies, some crypto influencers say they notice a difference.
Musk being a crypto proponent is commendable as he is an influential person . However, decentralization seems to be a boiling topic in the cryptosphere. Musk seems to be aware of the concept of decentralization as he claims he wants Twitter decentralized. I do not know why I find this impossible, probably because I don’t see him as a person that will really put in the decentralization talks into actions .
A central tenet of the crypto world is that institutions can be run in a more decentralized manner, with a large community making collective decisions instead of a top-down executive structure.
Both bitcoin and ethereum function more or less this way. Earlier this year In text messages to Twitter founder Jack Dorsey earlier Musk noted that he’d like to remake the platform into something new that’s decentralized.
Could that actually happen?
Some in the crypto world believe it could. This is a good first step perhaps one might feel. Next is a governance token and a plan to bring governance power to the Twitter community.
Not every one will see the decentralization of Twitter particularly by Musk possibile. Trust his critics not to be persuaded.
They argue Twitter is never going to be governed meaningfully by a decentralized force. Musk is the proprietor. I’d be amazed if he ever let anyone have effective control.
Musk is facing pressure to push up the value of Twitter which some analysts have said was actually worth about half of what he paid, partially because of the decline in the markets between his offer in April and its closing in October.
Twitter is also expected to owe roughly $1 billion in annual interest on top of recouping the investments of Musk’s many equity partners.
Musk has said he wants to monetize the platform, focusing on ways to drive revenue. And he’s also slashing costs and changing the company’s culture.
For sure crypto is one of the major ways Elon Musk is trying to bring productivity and value to his new orchestrated Twitter . Musk sees a big role for crypto on Twitter. He’ll face a tall climb , hopefully it is not An Achilles' heel for him.
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