Stars Turn Tokens — BitClout Concept Explaining: New Crypto Social Network
Tired of Clubhouse? Catch a new trend. BitClout has emerged in March as a brand-new crypto social network that monetizes reputation. Based on this, the platform comprises thousands of tokens associated with celebrities and influencers. In brief, each coin’s rate depends on how a particular person acts in public. You can buy these tokens with bitcoins, exchange them, and in theory gain some profit. But how does it work in practice? And what should we expect from this high-flying crypto project?
So-called Creator Coins are meant for speculations similar to those we see on Forex but the process itself differs. The social network combines features of Twitter and Reddit. Thus, you can create a profile, follow other users’ profiles, and publish posts as you do on any other social media. On the other hand, it gives you some speculation tools and offers a new way to invest your bitcoins. The platform itself is based on blockchain technology and has much in common with the Bitcoin architecture.
The person who has launched BitClout is known as Diamondhands. He insisted on maintaining his anonymity though his name is not a big secret. In the past, he had an unsuccessful attempt to launch a crypto project. Thus, this fact brings to light much skepticism concerning this social network. However, the product combining social media features and crypto speculation gained traction and found a receptive audience in a week.
Now, little is known about this platform. So, there are a lot of questions to be addressed. Yet, we know that it solicited the support of such investors as the Winklevoss twins, Coinbase Ventures, and Andreessen Horowitz. Herewith, the investment reaches about $170 million. Diamondhands stated that plans for further BitClout development and use to be announced soon. Thus, it is high time to discuss everything we know about this crypto project.
How Does BitClout Work?
If you want to join the network, the only thing you should do is to create a profile with your phone number provided. But the thing with BitClout that drew a negative response was that its developer initially created about 15 000 profiles attributed to mainly celebrities and influencers. The information about them was copied from their Twitter accounts without their direct approval. It resulted in the fact that some individuals asked to delete their profiles but others showed their interest and got access to BitClout accounts.
BitClout has a so-called cryptocurrency by means of which you can buy creator coins. Herewith, to get BitClout cryptocurrency you should pay for it with bitcoins. The value of BitClout increases with every million coins bought by users. Every person who has a profile reserved for him/her can get full access by tweeting about the platform and providing a public key. By doing so, a user can also take advantage of the creator coins percentage. Some celebrities have already claimed their profiles including Pamela Anderson who stayed away from social media for a while. She explained that the decentralized nature of BitClout was an incentive.
As mentioned above, on this platform, you can post your messages, share news and posts of other users, leave comments and react to others’ activities with likes. In terms of social media features or design, BitClout cannot boast creativity except for the initial idea itself. Thus, it gives a real chance to capitalize on the public reputation of other people or even make a name to benefit from your own. Plus, the value of a particular creator coin can vary depending on the number of users who have bought it. Otherwise speaking, popularity also makes a difference. If we dig deeper into the BitClout concept, the network seems to be the product of healthy capitalism that makes it possible to derive profit from your enthusiasm, good attitude, or socially approved activities. Overall, BitClout has growth potential as in theory it can motivate people to be more socially responsible.
Turning back to technical characteristics, the platform supported by blockchain nodes that are spread all over the world and meant to maintain the functionality of the network. Hence, everything that is happening on BitClout is stored in the blockchain. The team of developers promised to reveal the BitClout open source code in the nearest future. On the one hand, this platform is not the place where you will suffer from numerous ads and data leaks. On the other hand, the moderation policy is the potential downside of the network.
Explaining the Terms
We have touched upon such a term as a creator coin to explain how this crypto project works. Now, let’s look into other definitions and features in more detail.
Creator coins
Every person who keeps a profile on BitClout has a coin. Other users can buy and sell your coins. Herewith, they grow in price when users buy them, and depreciate when users sell them. In theory, you can predict the fluctuation. For example, Elon Musk plans to land on Mars. The result can be unexpected but you assume that it will be a success. Then, you can buy his coins in advance to make money by selling them later.
Types of profiles
There are reserved and confirmed profiles on the platform. Reserved profiles have been preloaded from Twitter and their owners probably do not know about them yet (or avoid confirming them). These users are out of the platform and their profiles marked with a grey clock. It means that you can buy and sell their coins, but they cannot derive profit from it. If a particular user claims his/her profile, it gets confirmed and the user can gain a percentage of his/her creator coins. Confirmed profiles are marked with a blue tick.
Buying creator coins
If you want to buy a coin attributed to a particular person, you need to check his/her profile and click on “Buy”. You can search the profile you need or check the creator coin leaderboard.
Ways to use the creator coins
First of all, creator coins can be employed for managing activities on your profile. For example, you can limit the comments under your posts by setting a necessary number of coins for getting the possibility to join the discussion. By doing so, you can also seal yourself off from spam comments. One more trick is that you can define the number of coins necessary to send you messages. Or you can rank your coin holders leaving the opportunity to message you for the largest ones. You can also determine the number of coins to be paid to send you a message. Secondly, creator coins help in promotion. For example, if you want a celebrity to repost your product, you should submit an entry into his/her inbox. If the person takes the necessary action, he/she gets the amount of money in the offer. Thirdly, you can buy and sell monthly subscriptions for premium content. Fourthly, coins give an opportunity to monetize likes. Thus, if someone wants to like your content, he/she should pay some coins. In theory, it might become a real identifier of high-quality content.
In Wrapping Up
BitClout provoked enormous controversy among the celebs and public personalities as well as ordinary people. One sees the opportunity to capitalize, other talks about “crossing a legal line”. Both sides have sufficient arguments and counterarguments. On the one hand, monetizing others’ reputations without their permission seems to be unethical. On the other hand, a lot of users got intrigued and claimed their profiles. Most of them tend to get into the swing of things and test this new channel of social media promotion. Plus, developers succeeded to remove profiles of people who minded being there and promised to do the same in the future. However, the system of processing removal requests is to be shaped.
