23rd April 2022 > > Crypto adoption.

tl;dr

Twitter is getting in on the crypto act but could go much further much faster.

Market Snap (at time of writing)

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said on Thursday that the next interest rate move in the US might be by 50bps. The sell-off in risk assets occasioned by that comment restarted yesterday afternoon hitting all asset classes leaving BTC back under $40k once again.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Non-fungible tokens (NFTs)

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Crypto adoption I

Under fire for some of its censorship policies that look an awful lot like a ban on free speech to most liberally minded individuals, and under attack from Elon Musk who wants to take the company private in a defence of said free speech, Twitter has resorted to the crypto world to try to garner some positive press.

In collaboration with Stripe, certain content providers will soon have the option to be paid in USDC, a stablecoin pegged 1:1 to the US dollar. The Polygon (MATIC) network will be used to facilitate these payments – a very fast, low cost layer 2 solution that sits on the Ethereum network.

Over time the number of content creators, and their geographical location, will be increased and extended.

A spokesperson, Esther Crawford, had this to say:

“We’re excited to begin offering crypto payouts to creators via Stripe, so they have more choice in how they get paid."

One hopes that this hints at a wider choice of crypto payment avenues than just USDC.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Crypto adoption II

Elon has said that he would like to introduce DOGE payments to the Twitter platform if his bid to take the company private is successful.

His personal fascination with DOGE is well-documented if seemingly slightly deranged. I suspect that once USDC and DOGE are enabled, the clamour for ever more crypto options will be too loud to ignore, even for the kind of personality that Elon exhibits.

Perhaps one of the greatest gains to be made if he does end up owning Twitter will be a crackdown on the proliferation of crypto scams that inhabit the Twittersphere:

“A top priority I would have is eliminating the spam and scam bots and the bot armies that are on Twitter. They make the product much worse. If I had a Dogecoin for every crypto scam I saw, we’d have 100 billion Dogecoin.”