Elon Musk pitched his idea for a new blockchain-based social media platform to his brother Kimbal in private texts: “This could be massive”
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Elon Musk told his brother he wanted to build a blockchain-based social media platform, texts reveal.
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Twitter previously expressed concern that Musk could use its internal data to build a competitor.
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The texts were made public in discovery during Musk’s legal battle with Twitter.
Elon Musk shared an idea for a potential Twitter competitor with his brother Kimbal Musk before offering to buy the company, according to a series of private texts released amid Musk’s legal battle with Twitter.
“I think a new social media company is needed that is based on a blockchain and includes payments,” Musk texted Kimbal Musk on April 10, the same day he announced he would no longer join Twitter’s board.
The billionaire had outlined his idea for the social media company the day before.
“I have an idea for a blockchain social media system that does both payments and short text messages/links like Twitter,” Musk texted Kimbal Musk on April 9. “You have to pay a tiny amount to register your message on the chain, which will cut out most of the spam and bots. There is no throat to choke, so freedom of expression is guaranteed.”
Musk said the site would have a “massive real-time database” that would keep permanent copies of messages and followers and a “Twitter-like app on your phone” that could access the database in the cloud.
“This could be massive,” Musk texted his younger brother.
A few days after sending the messages, Musk offered to buy Twitter for $44 billion.
Kimbal Musk appeared to support the idea, telling his brother that it could be a social media company that cuts down on ads by letting users “pay for usage” and could allow users to vote off fraudulent accounts.
“I’d like to learn more,” Kimbal Musk replied at the time. “I’ve dug deep into Web3 (not crypto so much) and the voting rights are amazing and confirmed. Lots you can do here for this too.”
“It drives me crazy when I see people promoting the scam that you are giving away Bitcoin,” Kimbal Musk wrote. “A lot of bad people out there.”
The two brothers appeared to be meeting to discuss the idea, according to an April 11 text from Kimbal Musk. Musk’s right-hand man Jared Birchall later presented Musk with recommendations for a software engineer “to talk to about the blockchain idea” on April 21.
“Great to hang out yesterday,” said Kimbal Musk. “I’d like to help think through the structure of the Doge social media idea. Let me know how I can help.”
But the conversation around a “Doge” social media platform does not appear again in the publicly available text messages.
Twitter has expressed concern in its lawsuit against Musk that the billionaire would use internal company data to build a competitor. In August, the Tesla boss teased his empty website “X.com” as a potential Twitter competitor.
The text messages were revealed as part of a collection of unredacted messages between Musk and several of Silicon Valley’s most powerful players, including Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. The messages are part of the pre-trial discovery process in the legal battle between Twitter and Musk.
The five-day trial, which will decide whether Musk will be forced to buy Twitter, starts on October 17.
Read the original article on Business Insider
