What is BitClout? Diving Into the Social Crypto Exchange

Note: This article is not intended to be formal financial advice. Always do your own research before investing.

The latest love-it-leave-it controversy to hit Web3? It’s called BitClout. Here’s a really simple explainer for you: BitClout is a social crypto exchange built around tokens for famous people.

OK, now that you’re still reading, let’s take that a little further.

Each BitClout account is linked to a Twitter account. If you are one of the top 15,000 Twitter profiles, you can gain access to your BitClout profile by tweeting out your public key at any time. Your account was already made for you. Once you access your account, you are entitled to a percentage of your creator coins, if anyone bought and sold them.

See the controversy now? This is a crypto exchange that makes rich people richer based on how famous they are. Well, sort of. Speculators can also make tons of money by picking profiles that increase in value. So the money is not exclusive.

Everytime someone purchases a creator coin, the price increases. In fact, the price of BitClout doubles for every million BitClout sold. So, if you pick a B-list celebrity that ends up getting really famous really fast, you may see some profits.

If a creator is already doing well on BitClout and they haven’t claimed their profile yet… they’re sitting on free money. For example, Ariana Grande is featured on the BitClout homepage as a fast-growing account, but she hasn’t claimed it yet.

The cool thing about crypto and the reason people love it so much is, unlike Facebook or Twitter, decentralized networks are open-source. Open-source means anyone can see the code. Anyone can see it = full transparency.

Thanks to smart people on Twitter, we get a further breakdown of how BitClout came about and why celebrity coins are spiking in value:

If you’re still reading this far, you probably want to learn a little bit more about BitClout before you go jumping in and trading Bitcoin for elon coins. And if you’re a crypto noobie, you should learn about Bitcoin and Altcoins before diving in.

BitClout works similar to Bitcoin. There is no real company behind it -- it’s just coins and code. The open-source project has its own native cryptocurrency, called BitClout. You can use BitClout to purchase creator coins linked to your favorite celebrities/twitter accounts.

When BitClout was first created, it auto-populated the top 15,000 Twitter accounts into their platform. It was then up to 1) the free market and 2) the creator to start exchanging and claiming rewards.

Also important to note, everyone with a Twitter account can make their own creator coin. It may not be worth much, depending how fire your Twitter game is. But there’s more to coin prices than just Twitter followers.

According to BitClout’s one-pager whitepaper, the idea is to connect someone’s social clout to an asset. If, let’s say, Lebron James rescued a bunch of puppies, his coin price should theoretically go up. On the reverse, if Lebron James found himself in a cheating scandal, his coin price would go down. By purchasing someone’s coin, you are not only investing in their Twitter game, but also their social reputation.

Putting all of the vanity behind glorifying celebrities aside, BitClout actually has some real-world use for high-profile Twitter accounts and content creators. The technology, for example, allows creators to limit comments to accounts with a significant stake in their coin. Want Will Smith to respond to your DM? You have to own some Will Smith coins first.

Sponsored posts for top stakeholders, premium social content, AMAs with top fans, these are all easily achievable under BitClout’s platform. Sure, you can already do all of these things on other platforms. But through BitClout, every subscriber has a vested interest in your success.

This could (and should) be the future of social media. I’ve always found it hard to understand negative comments on milquetoast content. Just keep scrolling, bro.

Well, under these rules, trolls have to invest in their victim to get a voice. Would you pay $100 to cyberbully?

BitClout may or may not be ‘the next big thing’, but the idea is certainly appealing. At first glance, it sounded terrible. No one wants to stake hard-earned money on the success of rich people. But we already kind of do that… It's called the stock market. Instead of companies, we stake our bets on people. What’s the difference?