What will Crypto Twitter look like after the acquisition? Blockchain leaders share their insights

by · November 3, 2022

Nearly seven months after Tesla CEO Elon Musk first made a tender offer to buy social media giant Twitter, the $44 billion deal finally closed, closely resembling the original terms despite a heated tug-of-war within the company. As a platform for news announcements, marketing and developer-user communication in the blockchain realm, crypto enthusiasts have already begun speculating about the future of Twitter now that it is in the hands of the billionaire tech entrepreneur.

At the annual Web Summit in Lisbon this week, Changpeng Zhao (CZ), CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, said the first feature he would like to see Twitter implement is accepting crypto payments. Previously, Binance invested $500 million in the acquisition, and CZ cited support for free speech and the monetization potential of the platform as the main reasons why he and the exchange decided to participate in the deal.

“The first step is to only accept crypto. For the $8 verification to be paid in fiat, one has to integrate 200+ payment processors because Twitter has users all over the world. But if you use crypto, you just add it and then you’re finished.”

CZ has too tired that “expecting to use a tool built by someone else for free is just not … free market. Think of all freemium social/chat products,” in response to a discussion initiated by US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez regarding whether users should or should not sign up for a subscription plan to voice their opinions on Twitter.

Other stakeholders, such as co-founder Hayden Adams of the decentralized exchange Uniswap and cryptocurrency exchange FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, appeared more concerned over the centralized structure of the platform. “Twitter spam is just difficult with the unnecessary limitation that it remains centralized to one company. They can just open up the APIs and allow developers to build on top and other people will fix the problem for them,” Adams said. Bankman-Fried also chimed in and added:

“If only there was a decentralized API-like layer that multiple companies could interface with without permission that could transfer information between people in real time globally.”

On November 3, Bankman-Fried revealed that FTX considered (but ultimately passed on) joining the Twitter deal because “it didn’t seem like our strengths were what was needed for Elon’s vision for Twitter.” In an earlier thread, the FTX CEO explained, “Twitter needed a leadership refresh, so Elon did it,” adding that sometimes the FTX team preferred to remain advisors to a company or vision rather than participate in one.

Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin also joined the discussion, expressing concern that a blanket subscription fee would potentially harm the platform’s anti-spam features for Twitter Blue. “Pay $8 per month and call yourself what would hurt the blue check’s anti-fraud role. But if there is more actual verification, the result is very different,” he wrote. Buterin then explained the pre-acquisition Twitter Blue verification system was far more exclusive than a $20 per month subscription, and that: “Ideally, verification would be charged at cost and separate from other premium services.”

But like both Adams and Bankman-Fried, Buterin advocated for more decentralized but controlled features to be brought onto the platform. “Ideal solution: social network-based localized trust instead of global scores,” he wrote. Adding mechanisms such as zero-knowledge identity checks and account quality score tabulation could potentially help reduce anonymous fraud in such a setup. Changes to Twitter Blue are currently underway after Musk closed the acquisition and assumed sole control of the company two days earlier.