Last Friday, Elon Musk became the owner of Twitter for $44 billion, and he’s already started making big moves.
One of the first changes that the platform will introduce was revealed Sunday night. The company is planning to charge $20 a month for having a blue checkmark, which identifies verified users. Accounts that already have the checkmark will have to pay for the subscription or have it removed within 90 days after the launch of the product.
Ganesh, a Twitter user, said: “Twitter adds a price tag to verification badge and reduces its value. No longer a mirror of society. Also cost of $20 different in different currencies. It’s no longer a truly global product.”
Josh Marshall, founder of TalkingPointsMemo, tweeted, “it’s almost certain to be a colossal failure.” He continued, “Having a Blue Check will cease to mean whatever vague sense of being a real person…, It will mean ‘I decided I want to help fund Musk’s Twitter adventure’. A lot of people won’t want to publicly say that.”
While many believe the move will be a mistake, in the crypto world, there’s been a lot of chatter about how Musk could also introduce new features that integrate crypto.
Twitter’s founder Jack Dorsey is a well-known Bitcoin bull, and Musk’s company Tesla owns over $200 million worth of BTC. Plus, the platform has created an NFT offering recently and allows users to accept crypto tips.
Given Musk’s interest in crypto, there are several ways Musk could add more features into Twitter using blockchain tech. For starters, the platform could use on-chain identification to solve the bots problem that Musk has pointed out earlier. rypto exchange Binance is reportedly forming a team to help Twitter solve its bots issue.
Musk is aware of the problems that arise with a centralized entity controlling the platform. As a core defender of freedom of speech, Musk could organize Twitter in a more decentralized way. Last month, a series of messages were revealed between Dorsey and Musk, in which the latter said “I think it’s worth both trying to move Twitter in a better direction and doing something new that’s decentralized.”
Additionally, Twitter could become an app that handles much more than tweets, memes and short videos. Twitter could have its own NFT marketplace, and also allow more cryptocurrencies for tipping.
Although it’s unclear what the long-term impact will be, Musk’s take over of Twitter had one immediate impact: His loved memecoin DOGE rose meteorically, and is up 91% in the last 7 days.
Dogecoin now sits as the 6th largest token by market capitalization (excluding stablecoins), replacing Cardano in that position.
