A social media platform built on top of the DeSo blockchain, BitClout looks, feels, and runs a lot like Twitter. You can post pictures, videos and fleeting thoughts, and follow people you want to see on your timeline. However, BitClout is not your run-of-the-mill Twitter clone. There is one fundamental difference -
BitClout allows its users to invest, speculate, and trade on people and their posts. Users who create a profile are automatically assigned their very own creator tokens, and these tokens are freely tradable on the DeSo blockchain.
Deciding your worth
There’s a catch; unlike traditional marketplaces, you can’t place a price on your own tokens. On BitClout, the free market sets your price.
The price of your tokens go up and down depending on simple supply-demand economics:
More people buy your token = price goes up, and if more people sell, the price goes down.
Now, how does this all play out in the real world? All speculative markets run on sentiments and emotions. This means that, if people feel good about you, if your social capital, a.k.a “clout” is high, your token sales go up and you end up being worth more.
But conversely, if you slip up and make a public mistake, you will watch your worth (literally) go to zero. Sounds like something straight out of Black Mirror, doesn’t it?
Monetising clout versus content
BitClout might not be the first decentralised social media project out there, but unlike its predecessors, it created a paradigm shift in value, prioritising the creator over their content. Instead of merely having monetisation features of creators to “sell” their content, BitClout enables users to tokenise themselves.
This is extremely ingenious. Instead of creating value via content (short-term), BitClout allows people to own an exciting asset class that is tied to the long-term value of their favourite creators.
Thus, by correctly aligning the incentives of influencers and their audience, BitClout has managed to create one of the best incentive structures in the creator economy space.
Concluding: The (real) bull case for BitClout
Let’s get this straight:
Many folks will view social tokens as an extension of the NFT hype-train. And they’re not wrong.
A speculative asset class tied to someone’s social standing does not feel like a huge value-add; rather, it sounds like another crypto bubble on the verge of crashing.
This is where BitClout truly shines. BitClout’s creator coins have significant functional utilities beyond mere speculation.
BitClout is decentralised. Anyone can build nodes and layers on top of BitClout to create custom utility mechanisms for monetising their audience. For example, users can offer exclusive benefits to token holders who meet certain conditions. One can set up nodes in a way that enables users who own a certain number of tokens to get comment or direct message privileges. Users and creators could also create superfan leaderboards for themselves, using token holding patterns as a proxy for their fans’ dedication.
All of these features come together to create an experience far more dynamic and interactive than anything that web2 creator economy platforms like OnlyFans or Patreon can offer today.
Hence, by giving a creator full control of their audience, and access to open-source models to facilitate creator-audience interactions, BitClout is encouraging the emergence of new economic models that are sure to revolutionise social media!