071. Diamondhands chats with Business Insider, and doesn’t hodl back.
Sign up for our Substack HERE; we deploy every issue (& special features) there. Don’t have a Bitclout account yet? Create one here and get $10 for free!
Sup fam,
Happy 🐪 day. What better way to get over the 🐪 than with a fresh brewed edition of @BitsTODAY? Whether you’re reading this before you hit the hay or you’re already waking up to a new morning in a time zone ahead of ours, we welcome you to sit back, relax, and read about all things BitClout. Onwards 👇
Bits on the menu tonight:
- BuzzClout: Exclusive updates from @bitcloutsignal and @bithunt ⚡️
- Ubiquitous UX drops: alpha leaks, big ideas, discussion & more 💣
- BitClout IRL: @EuroClout rocks the cloutiverse next week 💥
- Boomer media: BitClout takes over Business Insider … again 🔝
- General absurdity: @CassiusCuvee on the beat 🎶😤
Diamondhands’ drops 💎
#1 BuzzClout
First item on the agenda — today’s movers & shakers brought to you by @bitcloutsignal. Who was making waves today 🌊?
Second order of business — the movers & shakers of the community projects universe. Which teams were stirring the pot today 🍯? @bithunt has answers:
#2 Ubiquitous UX drops: alpha leaks, big ideas, clarifications & more 💣
There have been small tweaks to the BitClout UX in recent days, including a change that increased the max character count on posts up to 560 instead of 280 (most of us were using bitclout.plus to post biblical length sh*t anyways lets be honest). What’s more interesting is a steady drip of roadmap leaks as well as community discussion that we’ve seen across our feeds this week. Let’s go around the horn and take stock of the hottest topics, shall we? 👀
Let’s start with an alpha leak(s). @Fungibles, who runs in some top-tier circles, dropped a bomb 💣 on our faces yesterday as it pertains to BitClout’s near-term roadmap. Each piece he laid out here individually would be huge. Combining them altogether… we may have a runaway train on our hands 🚂:
Let’s now turn to ideas and discussion from the community. The uptick in activity on BitClout post-NFTs has stimulated lots of productive conversation. For one, NFTs themselves are still very much in a ‘v1’ state. There’s been lots of talk about what additional, low-lift functionality could be to improve the experience. @samhorine for one landed 3 direct hits straight into @diamondhands brain 🎯🧠:
We also found an exchange between @dharmesh and @diamondhands fruitful (catalyzed by @amann). They discussed how building nodes in and of itself isn’t an issue — stimulating adoption is:
The key takeaway for us here is @diamondhands (re-iterated) belief that the $10 bounty for new users to go through KYC will not just attract people to bitclout.com, but given that it can be used across nodes, will let node operators supercharge their own adoption as well. Time will tell if this works out — we imagine a whole host of other incentives and factors will be key, too.
Finally, @mubashariqbal also dropped big time knowledge on us re: nodes in general. We ourselves have likely been guilty of using “nodes” as a catch all to refer to any new BitClout experience or frontend we’d like to see. Really, the majority of what we envision doesn’t need to be its own node:
(Editor’s note: you know a couple paragrapghs ago when Diamondhands was like “who’s gonna build it? Well we nominate Mubs.)
#3 BitClout IRL: @EuroClout rocks the cloutiverse next week 💥
When we first heard folks were planning an IRL BitClout meetup in Berlin earlier this year, we were STOKED. And… it seemed like it was a ways away. After we descended on Miami in the spring, the prospect of waiting until August to see some of our favorite clouters partying it up at Berghain was almost too much to bear.
Fortunately, time flies in the cloutiverse 🌌 and August is already upon us. In fact, @EuroClout is already next week:
On August 20th through 22nd, clouters from across the great 48 nations of Europe (and likely beyond) will congregate in Berlin to share energy ⚡, strategies on how to take their BitClout game and the platform as a whole to the next level, and of course, beers 🍺. Should we go host our Friday Night Happy Hour in Berlin on Friday the 20th? Might be a stretch to get the whole team out there, but we could be convinced…
Anywho, let’s not make this about @BitsTODAY. Huge shout out to all the organizers of the event, including @LisaMariette, @GregCatch, @ValeriaC, and @Adilo, as well as many other clouters represented on the official euroclout.org website. Looking to RSVP and confirm attendance? You can do so here. Make sure to bring a pen and paper, too; we’re gonna be lookin’ for all the highlights from folks on the ground. Can’t wait to see you all crush it 💪.
#4 Boomer media: BitClout takes over Business Insider … again 🔝
Another day, another boomer media outlet taking note of what the heck we’re all up to over here 😝. While Business Insider has written about BitClout in the past (back in April), their article today marks a first; they chatted with @diamondhands directly for the interview, which to our knowledge no other media outlet has done.
While we love the @highkey boys for constantly bringing the hype and securing regular coverage of their own efforts on BitClout, it’s great to see this article zooming out and approaching the platform from the vantage point of its seminal founder, 💎🙌, as well as one of its most notable investors (Shaun Maguire, a partner at Sequoia, which is also one of the most elite and longstanding VC firms in the world). These stakeholders have long time horizons and a grand vision for what BitClout could blossom 🌱.
The article sits behind a paywall (here), so we took the liberty of capturing some of the 💎s for you:
“Diamondhands, the crypto founder known only by that pseudonym, thought he had time. In 2019, he began developing a blockchain platform named BitClout that would scrape 15,000 prominent Twitter profiles and attach a crypto token to their names. People could then use BitClout’s cryptocurrency to buy those “creator coins,” with their value rising and falling with demand. He planned to launch the company in mid-2021.
Then GameStop’s stock leaped from $35 to $325 a share. Diamondhands didn’t see a meme stock; he saw people investing something they could “relate to” and realized it was time to launch.”
“The BitClout team did ‘cut a lot corners’ to speed up the launch, but the platform has since fixed many of its shortcomings, Diamondhands said. Users can now sell BitClout coins on exchanges like Blockchain.com and request their profile be removed.”
“Maguire compared the funding to Sequoia investing in Cisco, which pioneered router technology and helped build an ‘open internet.’ He said he believed BitClout could be a model for open-source crypto projects.”
With NFTs launching, a $10 reward for new users, the roadmap items we discussed in section #2 brewing, and talk percolating amongst the ‘normies’ and on boomer media, we wonder whether we’re getting closer to the perfect storm many of us have been waiting for that will see DAUs, engagement, and $clout’s price all climb. We can feel it in our bones … can you? ⛈️⛈️⛈️
Hey Diamonddad? When we going to get that BitsTODAY exclusive interview? We gotta do it one time for the culture.
#5 General absurdity: @CassiusCuvee on the beat 🎶😤
We’ll keep this one short because y’all would be better off enjoying the video yourselves. All we’ve got to say is that recording artist and stellar clouter @CassiusCuvee absolutely CRUSHED it with his newest song and music video, Do it for the $Clout:
This is an absurdly dope viewing and listening experience, and therefore it merits a mention in our fan-favorite “General absurdity” section of @BitsTODAY. Can’t wait to see what else you cook up, @CassiusCuvee!
We’ll let @CassiusCuvee play us out as we exit the stage ✌️. Thanks for tuning in as always fam, we appreciate u.
Much love,
