Elon Musk Now Owns Twitter. What Does That Imply for Crypto?

With Elon Musk as Twitter’s fresh “Chief Twit,” the social media platform is up for predominant adjustments—all of which seem precious to the crypto plot.

Elon Musk’s acquisition of social media giant Twitter is a obvious fashion for the crypto industry. Amongst other things, the billionaire has prioritized combating crypto spam bots and integrating crypto payments into the platform.

Musk’s Crypto History

Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover looks to be in its last levels.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO posted a video on Twitter the day gone by of him walking into Twitter headquarters with a sink; the video used to be captioned “Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in!” Musk has since penned an commence letter to Twitter advertisers and retweeted a represent of himself assembly with workers at the Twitter HQ espresso bar. For all intents and functions, it now looks luxuriate in Musk owns the teach.

Musk has had a peculiar relationship with crypto. Tesla’s resolution to defend approximately $1.5 billion price of Bitcoin in January 2021 made global headlines: Musk himself tweeted, “searching back, it used to be inevitable” on the day it used to be announced. Nonetheless, the enviornment’s richest man regarded as if it would snappy lag on from Bitcoin and began promoting Dogecoin as an alternative, insisting the project used to be principal extra enjoyable. Musk even joked about the meme coin when he hosted Saturday Evening Reside in Would possibly 2021.

However it completely’s no longer continuously been rosy. Soon after his SNL skit, Musk announced that Tesla would now no longer accept Bitcoin payments, citing environmental considerations. The recordsdata sent the overall crypto market crashing. Despite later stating that Tesla would be commence to accepting Bitcoin payments again once Bitcoin mining turns loyal into a greener industry, Musk never showed the head cryptocurrency the identical handle he before the whole lot did. A 365 days later, in July 2022, Tesla printed that it had offered 75% of its Bitcoin holdings at a loss.

The Billionaire’s Twitter Plans

Musk’s relationship with crypto has had its americaand downs, but his acquisition of Twitter is basically seen as a obvious fashion for Web3. One of many most logical aspects of that is Musk’s intentions relating to censorship. The billionaire has over and over acknowledged that his major motive for acquiring Twitter used to be to promote freedom of speech and foster dialogue worldwide. Right here is loyal recordsdata for the crypto plot, as Twitter has change into an epicenter of crypto cultural activity. Musk’s permissiveness all but guarantees the industry will likely be ready to withhold utilizing the social media platform to invent.

Musk has also discussed imposing fiat currency and cryptocurrency charge parts into Twitter. While he’s been coy about info, he has urged that payments would enable him to transform the platform into an “the whole lot app” that is most definitely “so compelling you might perhaps perhaps’t live with out it.” Interestingly, it looks that Twitter is working on integrating crypto wallets into its infrastructure, suggesting the social media giant is already creating instruments basically based completely totally on Musk’s vision. It might perhaps perhaps in point of fact most likely infrequently be fine, clearly, for Twitter to indirectly enable payments in Dogecoin—as Musk has alluded to on a couple of times.

But any other of Musk’s priorities is the elimination of bots. Twitter has change into scandalous for them, and they also area off loyal harm to crypto customers by scamming them into clicking malicious links. Even Twitter’s “blue compare” has been unable to forestall bot multiplication, as a bewildering replacement of accounts were ready to impersonate verified customers such as Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin and Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao. 

Musk has been particularly vocal about this discipline, even within the muse walking away from the Twitter acquisition deal over claims that the company wasn’t being clear about its spamming problems. One of many alternate suggestions Musk floated for this used to be to electrify Twitter’s anti-bot algorithm commence to public evaluate; any other used to be to add an elective paid-tier provider for of us to display screen their authenticity—a sybil-resistant mechanism that resembles programs ancient on blockchains. No matter the method it indirectly takes, Musk’s campaign in opposition to bots will most potentially impression Twitter a safer and extra gratifying expertise for crypto natives.

Sooner or later, it’s price retaining Musk’s impulsiveness and favorite productivity in mind. No longer all of his projects prevail as spectacularly as Tesla or SpaceX, but he’s known for churning out fresh suggestions quick. As he establishes himself at Twitter, it wouldn’t be fine for him to relate extra crypto-linked products. For now, we are in a position to cherish that he’s an ally of the industry, if an unpredictable one.

Disclaimer: At the time of writing, the author of this article owned BTC, ETH, and several other other crypto sources.