Elon Musk, crypto and Twitter are three unlikely bedfellows but nonetheless are highly intertwined. Perhaps no subculture has embraced Twitter’s public square as fiercely as crypto-folk, and the microblogging service has also become a primary conduit for Musk to interact with his crypto — mainly Dogecoin — audience.
Given this Venn diagram, what could Twitter look like if it ends up going “full crypto” under Musk’s ownership?
Authenticating all “real humans”
Twitter has a serious spam bot problem, often combining with crypto to become a scam bot problem.
If you want to test this out yourself, just try tweeting “MetaMask” sometime. You’ll be instantly swarmed by bots trying to scam you into sending them your crypto coins. Hence, Musk’s stated aim to authenticate “all real humans”.
Twitter’s blue check-mark program seems like a feeble defense against a tidal wave of nefarious bots. Luckily, crypto itself has been trying to solve the problem of distinguishing bot from human for some time, using so-called “proof of personhood” protocols.