BitClout — Scam or the Next Big Social Media Platform

How it started?

I got introduced to BitClout from a tweet from my favorite entrepreneur (Dharmesh Shah from HubSpot) on April 1st (I shouldn’t have got fooled ;-)) and I hopped into BitClout.com to go check out what it was. It looked like a Social Media Platform built with a layer of a Celebrity Stock Exchange at the time and I thought “Hell, who wants another time-waster” and logged out. A few days later, there was another tweet where Dharmesh spoke highly about it and I thought maybe I missed something. I logged back in again and there’s been no turning back.

The last 100+ days have been nothing short of life-changing experience for me. I feel part of an open source movement, have met some of the most inspirational creators, including many great artists, many big celebrities and investors and all of them now know me by first name. My id is @randhir on BitClout. I’ve collaborated with those building platforms on top of BitClout by sharing ideas, bugs and feedback on UX and Features. I’ve created a community for Indian Creators and have made many new friends who I would never have even met if not for BitClout.

Is BitClout a Scam?

There were a few questions, for example not having an exchange to sell $CLOUT on and not being open source from the start as well as questionable decisions in the early day such as minting 70-80% of the $CLOUT to Core Team and early investors, showcasing celebrity profiles without their explicit permission.

While not all of them have been addressed, I see why they made most of those decisions and they’ve tried to be open and addressed most of the questions quite transparently.

Today, Bitclout is already listed on Blockchain.com and Ascendex and there’s talk about a Coinbase listing soon. This will be huge. The code base is fully open source and the core team has spoken about soon decommissioning BitClout.com once other nodes are active and working well.

The money accumulated will be spent to keep $CLOUT above $100 and also to fund further growth in user-base as more new features get added. My only peeve is that the core team are not doing enough to incentivize more projects and developers because for me, that is what will make or break this platform.

Despite my confidence in the platform, you should only invest what you are willing to lose in both time and money. BitClou does feel increasingly less of a scam by the day. YouTube has many videos in the search results for BitClout. Hopefully posts like mine here will slowly change the narrative and more people will give BitClout a chance.

NFTs

Bitclout released NFTs as a feature recently. While as a concept, it was new to me, I love what it is now doing for artists — especially those from developing nations because it opens up the world to them. A digital artist could mint one NFT and the sales from that could be more than what a Fresh Engineering Graduate makes in a month.

Soon, when a child says that he wants to become an artist or a painter or a musician and not a doctor or an engineer, their parents in India will not try to convince the child by telling her about her two oldest cousins who are doctors or engineers and are doing so well in life.

As a father of three, I will encourage my children to give Art, Design, Music or Drama a shot if they are showing any interest in this direction. These artistic subjects will be the first choice careers of many more people. The new #CreatorEconomy is certainly getting a boost with platforms like BitClout, as evidenced by the fact that I have minted a few infographics as a trial and one of them even got sold.

Are The Social Media Giants Scared?

The proof of BitClouts’s success is in the actions of the other players — Bitcoin Maximalists, Social Platforms such as Facebook and Twitter and Content Platforms such as Spotify, Twitch and Cameo. Several are already copying features. For example Spotify is offering Diamonds, a way of sharing value on BitCoin.

The leaders of these companies are speaking more and more about the Creator Economy. For example Zuck’s recent posts on Facebook (here and here). There also seem to be vested interests repeatedly spreading falsehoods without a significant argument or willingness to engage those from BitClout when confronted. Just look for any BitClout related post on Twitter and see them in the comments. I hope they soon realize that it is in our and their best interest that some variant of BitClout succeeds. So, let’s give it a chance.

While the giant of social media all know BitClout is nowhere near big enough to threaten them today, it could threaten them in a couple of years. So, they are most definitely wary of BitClout. The good news though is some of the biggest investor names including the likes of Sequoia Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Winklevoss Ventures and North Island Ventures among others are backing BitClout and they’ve got gas in the tank (as @diamondhands — a core team member of Bitclout revealed in one of his recent posts). With such big names behind this project and so much momentum already behind the project, will they let it die a slow death?

What Next?

Here are my recommended steps:

1. Log onto BitClout.com and Create your own account. Needless to say, follow me @randhir on Bitclout and DM me there so I can follow you back.
2. Verifying your Phone Number gives you enough money to create an account and get active on the platform.
3. Keep your Founder Rewards (% of the investment that goes to you) at 100% until you’ve figured out your game and also have enough of a following (Say 100 followers).
4. Put in a good base amount ($100 to $300) to buy enough of your coins to beat the bonding curve which rewards early buyers. DM me if you want help with this too. Working on a solution for this.
5. Reduce your FR to 10 — 25% and invite your followers to start investing in you.
6. Mint your NFTs, Enjoy your Founder Rewards, Take on projects for $CLOUT or CreatorCoins of Projects, Give out Diamonds for support from your followers and Invest your FR in your favorite creators too.
7. Whether you are a developer, artist, musician, designer, content creator or just a connector/investor, enjoy the game and make money while you are playing it.

PS: If you need help getting onboard, reach out to me on BitClout or connect to me on Twitter or LinkedIn. See you on the other side.