The last couple of days have been a blur.
It started on Saturday when I noticed several people on my Twitter network signing up for this service called BitClout. I had only read about it in passing a week ago and didn't pay too much attention.
If someone were to go to www.bitclout.com, you would see a cryptic message asking for a password. This block led me to find out what that was and I ended signing up.
As someone who is relatively comfortable with crypto, this isn't your regular sign up. You get a private key which is your password, and that's it. If you ever forget your private key, then you can't ever get your account back, which is why people are petrified of holding their crypto.
Once you get into the system, it is fairly familiar:
Where it gets interesting is that you will notice a buy button next to everyone's profile. This button is one of the core innovations around BitClout other than hosting their entire service on a public blockchain.
What you can do is support other participants on the network by buying their coin. Previously this has been very difficult to do. Patreon, BuymeaCoffee and Substack have all built fairly decent sized companies around this, but none of them has enabled the supporter to benefit from their early pledges.
If I find a great content creator who is writing very well, I could subscribe to their substack. I would get access to private content that they will produce for a certain amount of time. Suppose this writer becomes very famous well I can call myself one of the early supporters.
In the world of BitClout, I would buy the creators coin. This coin is a liquid asset that will appreciate or depreciate based on the performance of the creator. As an early supporter, I now benefit as the coin appreciates as more people find out about the artist.
BitClout gives me the availability to buy and sell the coin whenever I want. But there is a catch!
Since BitClout is less than a month old, there is no way for me to take my BitClout out of the system. This constraint is causing creator coins to inflate rapidly, and I have had a very profitable couple of days.
Sequoia and A16z are backing this project and some of the most prominent names in crypto. I bet that an off-ramp is on the cards. When it does come about, I expect to see a rapid descent in the price of a BitClout coin, which today stands at $150.
Regardless, I would recommend most people to check out the network and get comfortable moving around small amounts of Bitcoin and testing out the platform. This post in no way is investment advice as crypto is a highly speculative asset.
This platform gives you a glimpse into the future where the YouCorps of the world will have traded market caps, and they will act as signals with whom you would transact and wouldn't.
This decade continues to surprise!