5 ms·

BitClout collapses everything into money

51 points by hhs 5y ago

Animats 5y ago
BitClout really exists, but it may be a scam. You can buy their coins, but not sell them.
- mkohlmyr 5y ago
  I don't think there's much of a doubt. For a great overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsERRF39YiM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsERRF39YiM (edit: oh and the follow-up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBZ4v2-XynU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBZ4v2-XynU)
tppiotrowski 5y ago
Is this just a two paragraph article or am I missing a 'read more' somewhere?
- viraptor 5y ago
  You're probably missing some kind of "read more", or maybe block a paywall? https://outline.com/VALNKr https://outline.com/VALNKr
throwawayay02 5y ago
Imagine paying to "like" someone online. A fool and their money...
- tripplyons 5y ago
  It's even worse than that, most of the coins are for creators who do not use the plotform, so the token has no use other than a brand.
perihelions 5y ago
The idea of tabulated reputation as a currency dates back to at least 2003 [0] (and I'd speculate is probably much older than I know about). It's an interesting discussion, independent of the coin-of-the-week trying to cash in on the idea of it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_and_Out_in_the_Magic_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_and_Out_in_the_Magic_King... "Cory Doctorow: Wealth Inequality Is Even Worse in Reputation Economies" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11226549 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11226549 Previous threads specific to cryptocurrency implementations: "A New Digital Currency Whose Value Is Based on Your Reputation" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8053051 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8053051 "Whuffie – how to build a reputation currency in Ethereum? (2014)" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13427028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13427028
bko 5y ago
>Wen didn’t have any money of his own. (This past January, he had a balance of negative sixteen dollars in his Royal Bank of Canada savings account.) But his mom had some bitcoin, which she’d bought a few months earlier after hearing about it from a friend on WeChat. She lent all of it to her son, and he then converted a hundred and fifty dollars’ worth of it to bitclout.... We spoke on April 30th. At that point, he owned multiple BitClout profiles, which he told me had reached a combined estimated value of half a million dollars. Today, he’s grown that figure to approximately $1.7 million, or nine thousand and four bitclout, or sixty-eight hundred pairs of AirPods Pro. “To me, it’s just numbers,” Wen said. Wow, the article read like it was written by BitClout PR. Stories like this with no balance are incredibly irresponsible. Glosses over the fact that its closed source and anonymous founders. Towards the end they also mention that there's no official way to get your money out: > When he discovered that there was no official way to get his money out of BitClout, he saw an opportunity. Is it just me that sees all these things as red flags? The article compares the founder to Bitcoin's founder, although they do mention the possibility of "the beginnings of grift" > It is unclear why the main founder insists on anonymity, though it may have something to do with mimicking Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonym used by the unknown founder of Bitcoin. Whatever the reason, diamondhands runs the risk of creating a kind of Elizabeth Holmes effect: like her Steve Jobs-inspired black turtleneck, the BitClout founder’s mimicry of Nakamoto may appear less like a signal of validity and more like the beginnings of a grift. > (On June 12th, the supply of bitclout will be capped at fewer than 11.5 million coins, at which point the price of the currency will be determined purely by supply and demand.) It's no coincidence this came out 2 days before the advertised "deflation bomb". What happened to journalism? [EDIT] I think the prices are made up... Someone is "worth" $1,000, but you can't get your money out and they mint new coins. Every account has a different amount of coins associated with it. So if I want to buy a share, they (BitClout) just pick a price, they mint new supply and that's the new price. Again, you could have coins "worth" a lot, but that doesn't mean you can get that value. I tried checking out BitSwap, the exchange mentioned in the article, but there's no market, just a button to "Get Priority Access". It seems incredibly scammy. Its unfortunate that there are a ton of articles on how Bitcoin is a scam where (despite its flaws) it has potential to transform the world, but an obvious scam like this gets glowing press.
- 5y ago
rdxm 5y ago
yet another example of the steaming pile of shit that is the social media culture...
kordlessagain 5y ago
Finally, a Millennial Ponzi scheme!
ineptech 5y ago
Compare this to the stock market. Think of a share of AAPL, for a moment, as being the combination of two things: the ownership of a tiny sliver of Apple, and a bet that Apple will increase in size. The first part, buying a little slice of the company, requires Apple's participation. The speculation part, however, doesn't. I could write a webapp that simulates the stock market, declare that it contains X "shares" of Apple at Y price, and people could speculate on them, much as they do in the real stock market, all without Apple knowing or caring. That is, of course, exactly what Bitclout is: it replicates the "bet this company will do well" part of the stock market, without the "own a little slice of this company" part. But for people, rather than companies. I draw this analogy in order to try to answer the question: is Bitclout really stupid? And it seems like the counter-intuitive answer is, maybe not totally. These days it seems like investors don't really care about the ownership conferred by stock. I mean, they do for a small startup or LLC, but for blue chip stocks with no dividend, the "ownership" part is kind of vestigial; they're just vehicles for speculation. So what would happen if you made your own "stock market" app, where people could speculate on "shares" of stock that don't include any actual ownership? Would it work? It seems like it might. There are certainly problems: for one, there's no moat - nothing stops 100 developers from making 100 more such speculation sites. For another, they wouldn't be rational; my Apple "stock" might go up when the real AAPL stock goes down, for one reason or another. But the real stock market seems kind of irrational at times too. Not sure where I'm going with this; Bitclout still seems stupid to me, but less so than when I started typing this...
- meowface 5y ago
  Good points. This seems to be the case for the vast majority of ERC/BEP-20 tokens, as well, for example, and for plenty of other sorts of things. I don't know how I feel about them. Actually, I do know how I feel about them: instinctive distaste and sometimes revulsion. But that's just an emotion. What do I think about them? Is it all just a microcosm of finance in general? Is pointless zero-sum gambling really so bad, given it induces a sense of excitement and entertainment, if nothing else? I'm not quite sure, at the moment.
  - ineptech 5y ago
jude- 5y ago
Let's see here: * Closed source * You can buy but not sell tokens * Anonymous, unaccountable developers * They send your seed phrase to their servers [1] This is a blatant scam, and New Yorker should be ashamed of themselves for giving it oxygen. [1] No, really, they do this. https://mobile.twitter.com/_prestwich/status/1379963871792799744 https://mobile.twitter.com/_prestwich/status/137996387179279...
- chrisweekly 5y ago
  > "BitClout uploads your keys to their server on every API request. Any employee with access to that server can steal all the money on the platform at any time" !!
- moepstar 5y ago
  This comment really should have more visibility - since the article isn't written too critical and reads more like a fairytale..
unclekev 5y ago
BitClout is a scam https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsERRF39YiM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsERRF39YiM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBZ4v2-XynU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBZ4v2-XynU Its sad how many articles get made on how Bitcoin is a scam where it has potential to transform the way people use traditional finance/money/investing. But an obvious scam like this gets front page praise. Also, BitClout uploads your private seed/keys to their server on every API request - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27467634 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27467634 Everything about BitCloud screams scam and as the comment linked above said, the New Yorker should be ashamed of themselves for publishing garbage like this.
fungiblecog 5y ago
People really will gamble on anything...
phire 5y ago
"There’s also the fact that, three months in, there is still no formal channel for getting your money out of the platform." There it is. Your literal ponzie scheme can't collapse if you don't even implement withdrawals.
macawfish 5y ago
It's interesting to compare this to something like Circles UBI... they're very similar in some ways, except in Circles everyone's personal currency is given equal value, enforced by a social web of trust kinda thing. (The URL is "join circles" but I'm not telling you to join, I haven't even joined, just sharing the info...): https://joincircles.net/ https://joincircles.net/
nappy 5y ago
> Wen didn’t have any money of his own. (This past January, he had a balance of negative sixteen dollars in his Royal Bank of Canada savings account.) But his mom had some bitcoin, which she’d bought a few months earlier after hearing about it from a friend on WeChat. She lent all of it to her son, and he then converted a hundred and fifty dollars’ worth of it to bitclout. His first move on the platform was to persuade some of his friends to join, and the group proceeded to buy shares in one another. Next, Wen invested in the TikTok stars Dom Brack and Jeremy Hutchins. Three days later, he had made around six thousand dollars. He started planning to buy a new MacBook and a pair of AirPods Pro. “Back then, it was a lot, right?” he told me, a month later, over Zoom. Wen has an undercut topped with a mop of floppy hair, which he constantly runs his fingers through. He smiles often, the left corner of his mouth slightly higher than the other, producing an impish effect. We spoke on April 30th. At that point, he owned multiple BitClout profiles, which he told me had reached a combined estimated value of half a million dollars. Today, he’s grown that figure to approximately $1.7 million, or nine thousand and four bitclout, or sixty-eight hundred pairs of AirPods Pro. “To me, it’s just numbers,” Wen said. It's unfortunate that anecdotes like these will cause so many more people to lose their money, who don't understand that they're gambling, and with more than they can afford to lose.
Animats 5y ago
BitClout says they have funding from Sequoia Capital, but Sequoia Capital's site doesn't list them as funded by them. Hm. I wonder if that huge transaction volume is the same money going round and round. While you can't redeem BitClout tokens from BitClout, two sites claim to have a secondary market. One is "down for maintenance." The other has an order book with one ask and zero buy offers.[1] [1] https://app.bitswap.network/register https://app.bitswap.network/register
Growling_owl 5y ago
Everything old is new again. This is nothing revolutionary: The Hollywood Stock Exchange was a similar project

51 points by hhs 5y ago

Animats 5y ago

BitClout really exists, but it may be a scam. You can buy their coins, but not sell them.

mkohlmyr 5y ago
I don't think there's much of a doubt. For a great overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsERRF39YiM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsERRF39YiM (edit: oh and the follow-up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBZ4v2-XynU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBZ4v2-XynU)

tppiotrowski 5y ago

Is this just a two paragraph article or am I missing a 'read more' somewhere?

viraptor 5y ago
You're probably missing some kind of "read more", or maybe block a paywall? https://outline.com/VALNKr https://outline.com/VALNKr

throwawayay02 5y ago

Imagine paying to "like" someone online. A fool and their money...

tripplyons 5y ago
It's even worse than that, most of the coins are for creators who do not use the plotform, so the token has no use other than a brand.

perihelions 5y ago

The idea of tabulated reputation as a currency dates back to at least 2003 [0] (and I'd speculate is probably much older than I know about). It's an interesting discussion, independent of the coin-of-the-week trying to cash in on the idea of it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_and_Out_in_the_Magic_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_and_Out_in_the_Magic_King... "Cory Doctorow: Wealth Inequality Is Even Worse in Reputation Economies" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11226549 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11226549 Previous threads specific to cryptocurrency implementations: "A New Digital Currency Whose Value Is Based on Your Reputation" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8053051 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8053051 "Whuffie – how to build a reputation currency in Ethereum? (2014)" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13427028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13427028

bko 5y ago

>Wen didn’t have any money of his own. (This past January, he had a balance of negative sixteen dollars in his Royal Bank of Canada savings account.) But his mom had some bitcoin, which she’d bought a few months earlier after hearing about it from a friend on WeChat. She lent all of it to her son, and he then converted a hundred and fifty dollars’ worth of it to bitclout.... We spoke on April 30th. At that point, he owned multiple BitClout profiles, which he told me had reached a combined estimated value of half a million dollars. Today, he’s grown that figure to approximately $1.7 million, or nine thousand and four bitclout, or sixty-eight hundred pairs of AirPods Pro. “To me, it’s just numbers,” Wen said. Wow, the article read like it was written by BitClout PR. Stories like this with no balance are incredibly irresponsible. Glosses over the fact that its closed source and anonymous founders. Towards the end they also mention that there's no official way to get your money out: > When he discovered that there was no official way to get his money out of BitClout, he saw an opportunity. Is it just me that sees all these things as red flags? The article compares the founder to Bitcoin's founder, although they do mention the possibility of "the beginnings of grift" > It is unclear why the main founder insists on anonymity, though it may have something to do with mimicking Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonym used by the unknown founder of Bitcoin. Whatever the reason, diamondhands runs the risk of creating a kind of Elizabeth Holmes effect: like her Steve Jobs-inspired black turtleneck, the BitClout founder’s mimicry of Nakamoto may appear less like a signal of validity and more like the beginnings of a grift. > (On June 12th, the supply of bitclout will be capped at fewer than 11.5 million coins, at which point the price of the currency will be determined purely by supply and demand.) It's no coincidence this came out 2 days before the advertised "deflation bomb". What happened to journalism? [EDIT] I think the prices are made up... Someone is "worth" $1,000, but you can't get your money out and they mint new coins. Every account has a different amount of coins associated with it. So if I want to buy a share, they (BitClout) just pick a price, they mint new supply and that's the new price. Again, you could have coins "worth" a lot, but that doesn't mean you can get that value. I tried checking out BitSwap, the exchange mentioned in the article, but there's no market, just a button to "Get Priority Access". It seems incredibly scammy. Its unfortunate that there are a ton of articles on how Bitcoin is a scam where (despite its flaws) it has potential to transform the world, but an obvious scam like this gets glowing press.

5y ago

rdxm 5y ago

yet another example of the steaming pile of shit that is the social media culture...

kordlessagain 5y ago

Finally, a Millennial Ponzi scheme!

ineptech 5y ago

Compare this to the stock market. Think of a share of AAPL, for a moment, as being the combination of two things: the ownership of a tiny sliver of Apple, and a bet that Apple will increase in size. The first part, buying a little slice of the company, requires Apple's participation. The speculation part, however, doesn't. I could write a webapp that simulates the stock market, declare that it contains X "shares" of Apple at Y price, and people could speculate on them, much as they do in the real stock market, all without Apple knowing or caring. That is, of course, exactly what Bitclout is: it replicates the "bet this company will do well" part of the stock market, without the "own a little slice of this company" part. But for people, rather than companies. I draw this analogy in order to try to answer the question: is Bitclout really stupid? And it seems like the counter-intuitive answer is, maybe not totally. These days it seems like investors don't really care about the ownership conferred by stock. I mean, they do for a small startup or LLC, but for blue chip stocks with no dividend, the "ownership" part is kind of vestigial; they're just vehicles for speculation. So what would happen if you made your own "stock market" app, where people could speculate on "shares" of stock that don't include any actual ownership? Would it work? It seems like it might. There are certainly problems: for one, there's no moat - nothing stops 100 developers from making 100 more such speculation sites. For another, they wouldn't be rational; my Apple "stock" might go up when the real AAPL stock goes down, for one reason or another. But the real stock market seems kind of irrational at times too. Not sure where I'm going with this; Bitclout still seems stupid to me, but less so than when I started typing this...

meowface 5y ago
Good points. This seems to be the case for the vast majority of ERC/BEP-20 tokens, as well, for example, and for plenty of other sorts of things. I don't know how I feel about them. Actually, I do know how I feel about them: instinctive distaste and sometimes revulsion. But that's just an emotion. What do I think about them? Is it all just a microcosm of finance in general? Is pointless zero-sum gambling really so bad, given it induces a sense of excitement and entertainment, if nothing else? I'm not quite sure, at the moment.
- ineptech 5y ago

jude- 5y ago

Let's see here: * Closed source * You can buy but not sell tokens * Anonymous, unaccountable developers * They send your seed phrase to their servers [1] This is a blatant scam, and New Yorker should be ashamed of themselves for giving it oxygen. [1] No, really, they do this. https://mobile.twitter.com/_prestwich/status/1379963871792799744 https://mobile.twitter.com/_prestwich/status/137996387179279...

chrisweekly 5y ago
> "BitClout uploads your keys to their server on every API request. Any employee with access to that server can steal all the money on the platform at any time" !!
moepstar 5y ago
This comment really should have more visibility - since the article isn't written too critical and reads more like a fairytale..

unclekev 5y ago

BitClout is a scam https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsERRF39YiM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsERRF39YiM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBZ4v2-XynU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBZ4v2-XynU Its sad how many articles get made on how Bitcoin is a scam where it has potential to transform the way people use traditional finance/money/investing. But an obvious scam like this gets front page praise. Also, BitClout uploads your private seed/keys to their server on every API request - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27467634 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27467634 Everything about BitCloud screams scam and as the comment linked above said, the New Yorker should be ashamed of themselves for publishing garbage like this.

fungiblecog 5y ago

People really will gamble on anything...

phire 5y ago

"There’s also the fact that, three months in, there is still no formal channel for getting your money out of the platform." There it is. Your literal ponzie scheme can't collapse if you don't even implement withdrawals.

macawfish 5y ago

It's interesting to compare this to something like Circles UBI... they're very similar in some ways, except in Circles everyone's personal currency is given equal value, enforced by a social web of trust kinda thing. (The URL is "join circles" but I'm not telling you to join, I haven't even joined, just sharing the info...): https://joincircles.net/ https://joincircles.net/

nappy 5y ago

Animats 5y ago

BitClout says they have funding from Sequoia Capital, but Sequoia Capital's site doesn't list them as funded by them. Hm. I wonder if that huge transaction volume is the same money going round and round. While you can't redeem BitClout tokens from BitClout, two sites claim to have a secondary market. One is "down for maintenance." The other has an order book with one ask and zero buy offers.[1] [1] https://app.bitswap.network/register https://app.bitswap.network/register

Growling_owl 5y ago

Everything old is new again. This is nothing revolutionary: The Hollywood Stock Exchange was a similar project