My thoughts about BitClout

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(Edited)

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I've been told a lot in the past I should check out BitClout. I have looked at it multiple times, but never really got into it. I did setup account, but I haven't done anything with it yet.

Recently I've noticed a lot of Hive users joining like @raymondspeaks, @neoxian, @stickupboys, @chronocrypto, as well as others.

What is BitClout?

On the surface, BitClout is a social media site most closely similar to Twitter in terms of engagement and interaction. That's where the similarities end though, as BitClout is more focused on creator coins and building your own value through them.

What are creator coins?

Every user who signs up for BitClout gets their own creator coin. These coins have no initial value and increase in value as people buy the coin. The value increases predictable (although exponentially) through a bonding curve. Typically an owner will buy their own coin to kick off the initial supply, increasing the initial price of the coin and creating their own initial holdings. After this initial purchase, creators change their founders reward percentage from 100% to some value typically around 10%. This percentage determines the kick back the creator gets when others purchase their coin. At 10%, the creator will get 10% of all purchases of their own coin.

Creators initially buy their own coin, but they typically will buy coins from other users they feel will be successful on the platform.

Creator coins can be valued as much as $31,000 for a user like Elon Musk. But here is where things get sketchy. Elon Musk doesn't actually use BitClout, but he has a profile, he has a Creator coin, and owns his creator coin.

In fact, many people own some of the coins that represent a $10M market cap.

I'll go over this in more detail later.

Typically users of BitClout will purchase a few of their own creator coins which can be purchased super cheap and raise the initial price of their coin, and then purchase other coins from creators they believe will do well on the platform ultimately creating a portfolio of creator coins. For a while you could only purchase coins with no way to withdraw, recently developments have created a few ways to exchange tokens to BTC and ETH.

Users have an incentive to offer value and engage with others to increase the value of their coin while discovering other potentially hidden gems on the network.

One thing unique with BitClout is the peer pressure to not sell your own creator coin, if you do, everyone who owns your coin gets notified and many will immediately sell if they feel you are no longer invested in the platform. This creates a hold forever mindset until you are absolutely done with the platform. Unlike Hive, you cannot easily sell off a little bit on a regular basis without risking a drastic reduction in price. You have to understand how BitClout prices creator coins.

BitClout creator coin pricing

Creator coins are not priced on by market demand. They are priced by how many coins are in circulation and use a predictable yet exponential pricing model.

For example, the first creator coin can be purchased for around 30 cents. The second will cost around $2.10. While the third is $6, with the fourth costing $11. By the time 50 coins are in circulation you are looking at a token price of $750 and around $3,000 at only 100 coins.

This is why it is in your best interest to invest in your own coin to initially raise the price but also get as many as you can before the price goes up. This is also why selling your own token will encourage others to do the same as the price goes down just as fast as it goes up. If you start selling, it is in everyone's best interest to sell before the price goes down too much. This creates a really interesting dynamic between creator and consumer.

It's not all sunshine and rainbows

While I've been familiar with BitClout for a while and been nudged to sign up quite a few times, there are some concerns I have that have made me question investing in the platform.

First off, for a long time you were unable to sell your tokens, so you could only buy into the platform but couldn't get out. This has changed in the last month or so and multiple options have sprung up to allow an exit. Although I have concerns how trust worthy they are.

Another concern is how you are locked into the platform unless you are willing to greatly sacrifice the price of your own coin.

There was a ninja mine, and it was pretty shady. BitClout has a max supply of 19M tokens, with 2M promised to the team as the initial supply. What really happened was 8M tokens (roughly 42% of the max supply) were minted in the initial pre-mine. This is a very unfavorable initial distribution for investors especially when shrouded with mystery.

Many users received a huge distribution of this initial supply with some accounts valued as high as $17 million dollars of free BitClout. BitCloud does have a lot of big name investors and these are likely a good portion of these accounts. Some examples are PolyChain, Huobi, Winklevoss Capital, Sequoia, Reddit Founder, BlockChange, and more.

BitClout created profiles for very well known celebrities and distributed part of this initial supply to these users. They also had these accounts purchase their own coins to raise the price of these high profile accounts to at least $15,000 each. Other users in this pre-mine also purchased these coins at early prices to have an unfair advantage if any of these celebrities actually joined (most didn't).

A bulk of the top rated accounts are either unclaimed celebrity accounts or pre-mined whale accounts.

The network is really small, the last 1 hour of all global "tweets" on the network consists of 15 posts.

There are some other questionable practices in the early days of BitClout (and it is still really early for the platform). The owners have stood behind their decisions, but these events raise a lot of concerns.

A lot of the conversation on BitClout is about BitClout. This is a similar problem Leo had in the early days that I spoke up about a lot. For Leo, this has changed a lot and I have seen a lot more mainstream crypto news on the front page. This may change for BitClout, but right now it can feel like an echo chamber.

Is it worth it?

I really don't know. I have been hesitant in participating but I do have an account. I have considered investing a small amount to kick start my creator coin and start using it as I would use Twitter and promote Hive in the process. I am highly skeptical and very reserved about how I feel about it. It potentially could be a great tool to attract like minded individuals to projects that interest me, or it could be a complete wash.

I do love the unique concept of every user having their own coin that it is up to them to create value for and maintain. This creates a unique incentive to offer value as your own worth is directly affected by how others feel about you. It is greatly influenced by popularity and may be difficult to break through the noise. Everyone who does buy into your token not only raises the price of your token, but also increases your own holdings of your token.

You are welcome to follow me as I may start posting soon and purchase a few coins to get my own net worth started and invest in a few other users.


Securely chat with me on Keybase

Why you should vote me as witness

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta



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73 comments
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I'd be interested to see how you fair on here. I stopped putting crypto in it when you warned me about the dodgy aspects of it. I mean it's pretty cool if you chuck $100 at it and see where you go -- and it's always tempting to buy rising creators and sell them later.

You're right about selling the creator coins. Seems there's no incentive to sell your own.

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You're right about selling the creator coins. Seems there's no incentive to sell your own.

What people seem to do is create a second account and transfer the tokens to that account. So they can sell without notifying everyone.

For example:

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I played with it without even caring about creator coins.

Turn out I shitposted enough that I ran out $CLOUT that I have to buy more. That's probably not gonna happen.

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A lot of the conversation on BitClout is about BitClout...This may change for BitClout, but right now it can feel like an echo chamber.

My thoughts exactly.

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Nice, I just got started, thanks for the info!

Screenshot 2021-07-24 at 8.57.13 PM.png
So what now I gotta put 100 down minimum, hmmm.. interesting and easy so far!!

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You can buy around 7 of your own token with $100 but I recommend saving some to invest in other users tokens.

The price gets exponentially more expensive very quickly. $1000 will get you around 15 coins, 10x more expensive for twice as many tokens. For $10k you can only get around 32 tokens.

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Oh wow, thanks. I think I will use it for promoting some things back to hive too! Good idea!

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do you get all the time 100 for free? i don't understand it :P

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It sounds like an exhausting way to make money - micro tweeting to raise your own profile, and then trying to snipe the rising star coins.

Although I am interested in alternative social media models so thanks for sharing i will check it out anyway!

Worth having an explore, not so sure about investing anything.

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There is always a game to be played. You can choose if that is the only goal or not.

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I've played with it a little... But I also (with some stipulations I suppose) don't care if the dev team ninja-mines or pre-mines or whatever.... It's still better then bigcorp keeping 100%. And makes the possibility of a rugpull less,... Maybe? LoL, idk, I just love to play with technology...

https://bitclout.com/u/sn0n is my profile there. Shoot me a follow guys. What's your usernames there?

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There was a ninja mine, and it was pretty shady. BitClout has a max supply of 19M tokens, with 2M promised to the team as the initial supply. What really happened was 8M tokens (roughly 42% of the max supply) were minted in the initial pre-mine. This is a very unfavorable initial distribution for investors especially when shrouded with mystery

Lol, someone got jelly of ned & friends 😂

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta

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(Edited)

Criticize Ned, etc. dislike him, think little of him, whatever. But bottom line is his scheme worked, and so far no negative consequences really apart from a bunch of Steem/Hive users being pissed off, who he probably doesn't care at all about (or maybe cares but soothes his sorrows by buying another Lambo).

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Can't agree more. As I said, "someone got jelly of ned & friends".

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I once signed up on bitclout, but there was not enough activity, very few active users.
Recently, after seeing a post + some tweets of a famous writer, I wanted to join it again.

Your post clears the air, it's not worth spending so much time. Thanks for saving my time🙂

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(Edited)

I did throw in a few bucks to follow the movement.
Might be something in a later date or it might just flop as a crypto social project. 🤞

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Thanks Mr Marky Mark we ended up there on a quiet evening....not sure how it works and this post helps. We love Twitter but this feels different. We have been posting a little but as you said I am not sure of engagement levels! It is definitely a radical concept and we will pop in and see whats happening. Although we are not putting any money in there for the moment! I would think that you can buy and sell other creators coins for a profit? Also they seem very set on NFT development which does look interesting. Cheers and !PIZZA
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Not just a premine but also large OTC deals to insiders. We've seen how that story plays out.

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Yeah, there was a lot of questionable choices.
I am curious how it plays out, a lot of buzz around it, both good and bad.

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I just used BitClout to promote HIVE!
https://bitclout.com/posts/e0aa7519155aa465092e91d87e161ea630dd1864b4bc57961e1b3907f72f3287?feedTab=Following
No worries HIVE is still way better for earning, and hive's price is finally on FIRE now anyway! Both platforms have their place, with pros & cons! The last thing you want to do is discount it because you are biased because you are heavily invested in HIVE!
I hope what you say is true, and bit clout "plays out" in a big dip so I can get a lot cheap, but I really doubt that's gonna happen, but we can always wish. I think it's just so funny watching the big blockchain free speech advocates here quiver and FUD because they are obviously shaking in their boots in fear from the competition. HIVE will either succeed on it's own merits, or it won't nothing bit clout will have any say in. I just want you to sign up so I can buy some of your coin early? If you do sign up let me know.

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Hive Still Better for Earnings, and Hive's Price Really on fire!

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I'm not biased; I would love for there to be another Hive out there if being honest. I'm 100% here to leave a better place for the people that come after me. I won't be using the platform; I may look into any novel ideas. But social + premine on a layer 1 is just not something I'm into for pretty obvious reasons, seeing as tho centralized stake has robbed me for close to 1m dollars in plain daylight. My mission is censorship-resistant protocols over anything else.

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I guess you have a point about ninjamining. It did cost us dearly on STEEM!

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Well above my brain power. Read your post and thought.. Hmmm, do I signup because it sounds like another platform for me to take my attention from my real life, life? Or do I just ignore?

I have come to the conclusion that I do not know because I am on an endless look of should I or shouldn't I?

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Well above my brain power. Read your post and thought.. Hmmm, do I signup because it sounds like another platform for me to take my attention from my real life, life? Or do I just ignore?

I have come to the conclusion that I do not know because I am on an endless look of should I or shouldn't I?

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Well above my brain power.

Don't sell yourself short.

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Aww thanks Marky.

I will try my best.

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I didn't know anything about this social network, I'm not currently interested in using it, we'll see in the future. Thanks for info shared

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First time hearing about this platform, I hope to explore more soon. At the end of the day, all I want is to check and accumulate new coins on my trusted wallet application from https://atomicwallet.io/

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Anti-Free Market and they create 'my' coin without giving me any power over it? So it's 'a coin' called the same as my account essentially.

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Hard pass on this one, the more I dug into it the more off putting it was. Anything with a premine and preorders to me is just doomed to be a cash grab and try and suck others in while those few at the top cash in big.

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta

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Almost every project has a pre-mine of some sort. 42% is insane though.

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It’s amazing that people invest in this crap. My short experience was more like a popularity contest. It’s bad enough these people have more fiat then they know what to do with. If we want to change the world with crypto we have to get past the lower ego brain. Bitclout is the poster child for this type of thinking.

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta

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It stopped working today, won't let me upload an image??

Screenshot 2021-07-26 at 7.17.47 AM.png

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I haven't seen that before, I've been using CloutFeed on mobile as well as the site.

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Yeah I sent support a message about it, waiting to hear back. I did see someone else mention the error on reddit, when the system gets overloaded, so possibly the case.

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Oops I ran into another one of these messages. After using Bitclout I have come to the conclusion that HIVE is a lot better, I just wish the price of HIVE were more like $CLOUT I don't think I'm going to put that much investment into the bit clout platform to tell the truth, just gonna wait till HIVE hits $100! It doesn't seem right that this site just came out and their coin is already 100 bucks, sounds like a big rip off to me. Since I had so many errors I didn't invest yet, maybe that is what I'm getting errors, but I don't wanna pay money to post either?? hmm....

Screenshot 2021-07-26 at 10.39.40 PM.png

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You have to pay for each action, but it is a very tiny amount, even one cent will allow you to do a lot of actions.

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Yeah unlike HIVE where you get paid for every action pretty much. I'm just spoiled here, I'll give it a chance, I heard there are better deals on the coin on the exchanges, and it is possible to cash in and out so it does seem legit. New learning curve there, still think hive is easier.

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Arbitrage stabilized price off chain so they are all around same price now. Even 1 cent will last you a while and when people buy your token you get a portion (typically 10%) in $Clout.

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I was just about to go pick up some bit clout up, but block trades is down? Just my luck, have you heard anything about what is going on with them, or have any idea when @blocktrades is coming back online, if at all?

Screenshot 2021-07-27 at 7.04.50 AM.png

Screenshot 2021-07-27 at 7.06.49 AM.png

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I don’t know to be honest.

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Too bad there isn't a nice easy exchange hive to clout. I guess I may have to use some shady exchange intermediary? To tell the truth I don't even have an exchange that I haven't been kicked out of that I can use with hive right now. Maybe ionomy is the only one, I'll have to check that out!

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Do a search for clout exchanges, there are a few. I believe there is a BTC one and ETH.

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Still down as I just saw ur comment now. Any update posts by them?

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(Edited)

I did get an update from Julia saying that it was working, however I just checked and it is still looks down like you said? Weird.

I ended up using simple swap instead, https://simpleswap.io, and it worked just fine! I needed to swap a little HIVE to bitclout for testing it out. I guess simple swap goes through binance, it was automated and very fast, so I liked that solution while block trades is away. Thanks for the reply!

Screenshot 2021-07-27 at 1.07.50 PM.png

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Maybe this cross posting to BitClout is helping hive out a little bit, I think you are right about it being a good tool.

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That's my thought, but it is hard to get noticed. Even though you can read an hour of the entire chains tweets in like 1-2 minutes, there isn't much engagement unless you are popular.

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Oh yeah, it's like king back in time, it will take years to get clout on bit clout! Unless we make a voting bot for their site lol! Hmmm.....

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@themarkymark Interesting. I will wait for your next information, to document myself a little more about it,

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