Getting Started on BitClout

Ping

From the article: Founder Reward Percentage is the percentage of every dollar you get whenever people want to make/buy your CreatorCoins aka “You” coins. Its like a tax you get to claim. Mine is at 15%. That means when someone wants to spend $100 on RickWallCoin (and who wouldn’t want to amirite?) then of that $100 they get $85 of RickWallCoin and I get $15 of RickWallCoin. Yours will work the same way with your FounderRewardPercentage.

Like most cryptocurrencies, it's a pyramid scheme, although even more blatant in this case. Here, buy some of my IAmNobodyCoin.

There are accusations of being a pyramid, or Ponzi scheme. What do you say to this?

Full disclosure: I have made many comments here in favor of cryptocurrencies starting well before the big runup in late 2017. Example thread: https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3476111/posts chosen randomly. However I believe I never recommended that anyone purchase them, except if they want to speculate. In that case I would recommnend researching a coin with more utility than trading or transacting such as the proposal in that thread.

The "scheme" described above has similarities to the "Second internet" described in that thread. There's nothing particularly wrong with the anonymous developers running Bitclout asked people for Bitcoin to obtain Bitclout coin, particularly if the Bitcoin was obtained cheaply and is being used for further speculation. However: "According to Diamondhands, there was a pre-mine of 2 million BTCLT tokens for founders and investors" Diamondhands is the apparently anonymous lead creator of Bitclout. As anyone with a bit of knowledge of the space will tell you, premining is by definition a pyramid, where the founders give themselves an initial batch of the coins.

I'm not saying that all premining is bad. It really depends on how much value the founders are providing. Are they providing enough new ideas and solid infrastructure that everyone else should jump in? BitClout runs on a proof-of-work blockchain much like Bitcoin’s, but one designed to hold the text of social media posts. The BTCLT token is used as gas and will likely eventually be used in a governance process that manages the project’s BTC treasury. https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/what-is-bitclout-the-social-media-experiment-sparking-controversy-on-twitter-2021-03-22

That sounds fine but I have no evaluated their code since they have not open-sourced it. Diamondhands said the creators are hiding their identities in order to keep the project decentralized in spirit as well as fact. I think that's a stretch. Crypto social networks are not new, but Diamondhands argues the key innovation with BitClout is that it emphasizes the value of the creator, not their content.

That's where I see the pyranid. “The platforms that have existed up to today, really focus on speculating on the post as the atomic unit, rather than on the creator. And there’s a very big difference, because posts are short term,” Diamondhands said. The posts, like mine, are what in fact hold value. I have been valueless many times in this forum, making useless or untrue statements (I thought I was correct but didn't have all the facts). I can safely say I don't have a brand here, although some posters do. I don't want a brand.

I strongly suggest reading the article I linked: “I dont think it’s a ‘scam’ though. People use that term way too loosely,” Castle Island Ventures’ Nic Carter, who had not activated his account nor invested, told CoinDesk. “I think it’s certainly got some Ponzi-like features, but so does everything now. Every consumer app is gamified. Frequent flier miles are basically a Ponzi.”

I agree with that. I don't think it's a scam either since the creators are proposing a new method of valuing influence. It's similar to Twitter where influence has its own intrinsic value. In fact the number of twitter followers you have is the metric, although imperfect. I think I had 5 or 6 followers at one point. The cloutcoin value would be an objective measurement. The example guy in the article is worth $12,000 on paper. I would be worth $10 having essentially no twitter followers or other way to publicize my profile and induce people to buy it.

I don't begrudge those folks their social media clout or paper value. But I would only point out that the social media space is extremely flawed with massive quantities of pure crap, big controlling companies and censorship. Facebook in fact started as a dating site is still is. Twitter is a rumor mill that censors facts (e.g. facts about vaccines). I could go on and on.

Note some of the italicized text above is my comment, not DIamondHands. Specifically "The posts, like mine, are what in fact hold value. I have been valueless many times in this forum, making useless or untrue statements (I thought I was correct but didn't have all the facts). I can safely say I don't have a brand here, although some posters do. I don't want a brand." is my comment.

Sorry, I missed a close italics tag.

Very interesting! Thank you!