Tag: twitter

Twitter CEO: Bitcoin is a Prime “Currency of the Internet” Candidate

The founder and CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey has said that he has not considered creating a native coin for his own social media platforms like the Libra which Facebook had expressed intentions of unveiling as a “new global currency” in June targeting a launch in Q1 of the year 2020.

However, he expressed his full confidence in the ability of Bitcoin to perform perfectly as the “currency of the internet” when compared to any other thing currently obtainable today.

Mr. Dorsey, who has long been a strong proponent of Bitcoin, told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald in an interview published on September 5, that he strongly believed in the pioneering digital currency, saying that it was still the “best bet” to be the internet’s native currency. He stated its open and Decentralised nature allowed it to stand a better chance of providing users with great utility more than any possible alternative can. He said:

“I think open Internet standards serve every person better than ones controlled or started by companies.”

Dorsey had also used the opportunity to promote his payments company Square, and he firmly stated that he has no plans to use the influence and popularity that Twitter had gained to make drive the company into the financial industry himself.

The CEO had also been seen making efforts to raise the level of awareness of people about the scaling technology used for making very small payments efficiently known as the Lightning Torch in the earlier part of this year. 

eToro’s AI Copy Portfolio Trades on Sentiment

The eToro trading platform launched its latest user copy portfolio on Tuesday, an artificial intelligence (AI) tool that trades on the sentiments of 850,000,000 daily tweets.The eToro/Tie copy portfolio is the creation of a partnership between The Tie data analysis firm and Social Market Analytics (SMA) that leverages proprietary machine learning and natural processing technology to assess and quantify traders feeling towards digital assets. All eToro traders have to do is click copy on The TIE portfolio, with a minimum buy in of $2000, and the AI will diversify their crypto portfolio among the most positively discussed assets.  

Crypto Market Driven By CrowdAccording to an introductory presentation released by The Tie on its partnership with eToro, there is a strong correlation between twitter sentiment and crypto market movements. 

From the presentation, “Unlike traditional assets, cryptocurrencies do not have fundamentals. Bitcoin has no revenue, dividends or debt. The value of digital assets are driven by supply and demand, and movement is determined by the wisdom of the crowd.” In this day and age, Twitter is where the crowd holds the discussion.

While the analytics tool may be new to consumers, Joshua Frank, CEO, The Tie explained in a YouTube video, that hedge fund managers and investment firms have been leveraging the same SMA data stream the eToro copy tool now uses. Frank said, “eToro is a social trading exchange in itself, making it the perfect partner for The Tie’s technology.”

Bots and Overlaps

Every day, The Tie’s AI scours through the 850,000,000 tweets and analyses, sorts and interprets social sentiment toward cryptocurrencies. Filters are used to assess the relevance and remove spam and bots, and sophisticated algorithms study the language of the tweets and assign ratings to different investors. Through the evaluation process, only 10% of tweets on any particular currency usually remain in the stream.  The presentation highlights how each tweet is scanned individually and extracted to a relevant category, but there are close to 80 overlaps between crypto-asset abbreviations and non-assets. “Using patented technology SMA is able to combat problems related to overlapping tickers across asset classes. For example, identifying whether an ETH tweet is on Ethereum or Ethan Allen, the publicly traded furniture company.”

Image via Shutterstock

Twitter Takes on Decentralization with New Social Media Development Project

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is working on an initiative to decentralize social media, also known as ‘BlueSky,’ alongside five other programmers. Previously, Twitter was known for its decentralized aspect in its early days, and many of its users advocating for it to be that way. With time, the company was influenced by the development of the internet, which Dorsey recognizes to have new challenges – e.g., losing the value of content hosting measures and still gaining tools to redirect the attention of the masses.

His latest initiative will include five developers looking to write codes for this project. Dorsey has dedicated funds for this new project, which ultimately will put social media platforms on blockchain.

Equally, this will make way for censorship resistance and other intricate features that will grab the attention of today’s consumers. At present, the team working on the project, including independent architects and coders. Twitter is not claiming sole ownership of the project; instead, it will join the platform between the client and assist it as an external protocol.

Some of the positive attributes of this project include it circulating in the blockchain space as opposed to trying to compete with mainstream media. Essentially, a blockchain startup has the potential to reach similar levels of recognition by requesting for articles to be written on them. 

 

Image via Shutterstock

"I Knew Owning Bitcoin Was a Bad Idea," Claims Peter Schiff After Losing Access to His Bitcoin Wallet

Recently, the reputed crypto skeptic, Peter Schiff tweeted that he is unable to gain access to his Bitcoin wallet and his password is invalid. Consequentially, Schiff believes that his BTC has no value and is nullified in terms of market value. To quote precisely, “I knew owning Bitcoin was a bad idea, I just never realized it was this bad!”.

However, the crypto community was eager to resolve the issue; for instance, Anthony Pompliano, co-founder and partner at Morgan Creek Digital, addressed the issue of ‘forgetting the password,’ to which Schiff replied, “My wallet forgot my password.” The exchange between the two was then transferred to email, Pompliano wrote to Schiff, “The software executes the commands that humans give it. It can’t ‘forget’ anything. Email me, and I’ll try to help you recover the lost Bitcoin.”, to which Schiff replied, “Eric Voorhees set up the wallet for me, and even he thinks there is nothing I can do. But you’re welcome to try if you have any ideas.”.

Although, the chances of Schiff retrieving the BTC are slim, as they may be gone for good. Moreover, Schiff has gained a reputation for being an outspoken critic of cryptocurrencies. Before the new year, he suggested that unlike every other asset class, BTC was not increasing in value towards the end of 2019. 

Image via Shutterstock 

Twitter CEO Endorses Bitcoin For Black America

Whenever discussions about the benefits of cryptocurrency adoption take place, there are often misconceptions about which ethnic groups, in general, know the most and which stand to gain the most from the decentralized technology. While the value and power of cryptocurrency have been steadily recognized in parts of Africa due to necessity with inflation and remittance, this type of adoption is not taking place within the African American community.

The African-American community is in the majority recognized to be at an economic disadvantage, with an existing legacy financial system propelled by unethical practices such as redlining, among others. However, cryptocurrency, by its nature, could serve to rectify such circumstances and level the playing field for all involved.

On Feb. 23, Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, tweeted his support of a new book that promotes Bitcoin’s substantial potential benefits to the African-American community. Dorsey, whose Twitter platform now hosts about 330 million users globally, told his own 4.3 million followers how Bitcoin could prove to be a potential lifesaver to the African-American community.

The book, Bitcoin and Black America, written by Isaiah Jackson, offers a breakdown of the role cryptocurrency can take in the African-American perspectives, a group with a history of being underserved by major financial bodies. As noted by the writer, it is quite surprising that black people in the US are yet to embrace cryptocurrency despite the fact that it offers a potential route to financial autonomy.

Call for change in perception of cryptocurrency to the African-American community?

According to Jackson, one of the major problems among the African-American community is their outlook on cryptocurrency. Although they are not the only group that sees Bitcoin as a potential scam, with news of several schemes being employed to exploit the lack of regulations in place for cryptocurrency, Misinformation coupled with lack of banking access has made investing in cryptocurrency less appealing among the black people in the United States.

In his book, Jackson called for a quick change in order not to miss the potential benefits that could be derived from the use of Bitcoin. His sentiment seems to have been shared by the Twitter CEO, as shown in his tweet yesterday. Recently, Jack has also been seen to show interest in this space as he has made efforts to come up with a decentralized social media platform earlier this year.

Image via Shutterstock

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong Ponders Mass Cryptocurrency Adoption on Twitter

Brian Armstrong, the CEO of leading crypto exchange Coinbase, recently took to Twitter to openly discuss what he believes it would take for cryptocurrency to attain the popularity of the internet, while also highlighting some striking parallels.

In a series of tweets on 4th March, Armstrong discussed how the developments that led to the mass adoption of the internet are very similar to the work that is currently being done on cryptocurrencies. He acknowledged that it is not clear how blockchain will help increase cryptocurrency consumers from 50 million to 5 billion. However, he predicted that: “The chain that manages to ship some of these scalabilities, privacy, decentralized identity, and developer tool solutions will have a big leg up.”

Cryptocurrency Parallels the Internet

Armstrong compared cryptocurrency adoption to the expansion of the internet. The Coinbase CEO explained the evolution of the internet from the early days when things were not very scalable to when inventions such as HTTPS and SSL were created, which eventually attracted startups and developers from all over the world. It is these tools that kickstarted the mainstream adoption of the internet.

The Coinbase CEO noted that the parallels between the journey of the internet and cryptocurrency were “pretty staggering.” On Twitter, he explained that there is room for growth and development in the usability of Dapps and smart contracts. According to Armstrong, with improvements in both smart contracts and Dapps, making them user friendly, they would attract significantly more investors from logistics, medical industry, etc., and eventually increasing users and develop popularity further.

How Crypto Could Grow To 5 Billion Users

Armstrong stated that the current cryptocurrency users are 5 million. He explained that for the current number to rise to 5 billion users – a 9,900% growth – there are main areas of development that the crypto industry needs to fix.

To achieve such enormous growth, Armstrong identified the four key areas, which he is convinced would unlock mainstream adoption: decentralized identity, privacy, scalability, and enhanced software developer tools.

Positive Cryptocurrency Regulation Could Assist Increasing Adoption

Last week there have been positive developments in the crypto industry with regards to global regulations. Following the Supreme Court of India lifting the ban against cryptocurrency, South Korea quickly passed a new amendment that made cryptocurrency trading legal in the nation. With world governments beginning to adopt a more positive attitude and clarify mystifying regulations should bring some much-needed confidence to the often misrepresented market.

Image via Shutterstock

Is Bitcoin still a Safe Haven? The Crypto Community Debates on Twitter Following Global Stock Market Crash

Bitcoin’s status as a safe-haven asset has been under intense scrutiny as the BTC price continues to fall amidst a series of crisis events in 2020 which have continued to create the ideal environment for the digital commodity to theoretically thrive. Beginning with the Iranian – US conflict in early Jan, the coronavirus outbreak triggering a cut in interest rates by the Federal Reserve, and now the plummeting oil price following disagreement in Vienna between Russia and the OPEC nations, by now surely Bitcoin’s price should be climbing due to its hypothetical ability to act as a non-correlating market hedge asset?

Markets worldwide have been gripped by growing fears over recent weeks as the coronavirus disruption ground manufacturing in China to a halt causing bearish global ripple effects and decreasing demand for oil. Last night, a break down in the alliance between Russia and the OPEC appears to be presenting as the straw that may break the proverbial camel’s back as oil prices took their biggest dive in 30 years.

The combination of the breakdown between Russia and OPEC and the already anxious coronavirus fueled environment has now facilitated the biggest decline in the stock market since the global financial crisis of 2009.

The biggest stock market drop since 2009

Stock Market Indices

% Fell

S&P 500

6%

Dow Jones Industrial Average

6.9%

Nasdaq Composite

5.4%

UK FTSE

7.7%

Hang Seng Index

4.2%

ASX 200

7.3%

China’s Shanghai Composite

3%

Japan Nikkei 225

5.1%

According to a report from CNN on March 9, the New York Stock Exchange halted trading for 15 minutes after stocks plunged more than 7% and the yield on the 10-year Treasury note also hit a record low falling below 0.5%.

President Trump Reacts

The sell-off panic began after Saudi Arabia unexpectedly launched a price war, slashing its own oil prices, in an attempt to retake the global market share. The sudden move by Saudi Arabia followed last Friday’s refusal by Russia to go along with the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’ (OPEC) efforts to rescue the oil market from the drop in demand caused by the coronavirus outbreak.
 
President Donald Trump was among the first to chime in via his favourite social media platform, Twitter. The President acknowledged the disagreement between the Kingdom and Russia as the catalyst but also pointed fingers at the sensational or as he would say “fake” news.

Bitcoin’s Reaction

Despite a belief by investors that Bitcoin could serve as a tool against currency depreciation, the price of the cryptocurrency has also dipped over 13% since the failure by OPEC and Russia to reach a resolution. In a recent interview with CEX.IO Founder Oleksandr Lutskevych, he confirmed that US investors have been acquiring Bitcoin to hedge against the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing and UK investors have also been relying on it as a bona fide store of value against Brexit fears.

Source: CoinMarketCap

In an article by Coindesk on March 9, Matt Smith, Director of Commodity Research, ClipperData described Saudi Arabia’s move as drastic and the kingdom’s attempts to bring the Russians back to the table has hurt economies everywhere.

The oil market is currently oversaturated and Smith believes it will be difficult for nations to reconfigure their supply chains to properly address the imbalance. 

As Bitcoin has fallen with the traditional markets, Smith believes there is currently no serious interest in Bitcoin as a market alternative. He dismissed Bitcoin’s assumed safe haven status saying, “In times of crisis, all markets correlate.”

Crypto Market Twitter Reactions

Never one to miss out on an opportunity to kick the decentralized currency when it is down, economist Peter Schiff openly mocked the community for their belief that Bitcoin would moon in times of crisis. “The news couldn’t be more bullish. Yet the price action couldn’t be more bearish.” Schiff appears to still be licking his wounds from the onslaught of mockery he received when the price of gold, of which he is a super-advocate, fell immediately following the Federal Reserve’s rate cut of half a percentage point.

Schiff immediately received some push back from twitter users on his feed and offered the following explanation.

CEO of Coinbase, Brian Armstrong who only days ago openly pondered the fate of Bitcoin while drawing comparisons to the rise and adoption of the internet, seemed perplexed by the bearish movement saying he, “expected the opposite.”

Less Volatile than Traditional Stocks

American Bitcoin investor and influential figure in the space Anthony “Pomp” Pompliano, shared a different perspective, highlighting that the stock market had acted with a much higher rate of volatility than BTC.

Jimmy Song, one of the core developers in Bitcoin, reiterated Pompliano’s sentiments and also tweeted regarding Bitcoin’s low volatility considering the extreme stock market reaction.

Samson Mow of Blockstream also lent his voice to the cause. He outlined that Bitcoin was actually doing incredibly well in the crisis climate for a “ decentralized apolitical supernational asset” that was worth nothing a decade ago. He even directed his follower’s to a thread explaining why you should continue to buy Bitcoin.

At this point, it would be reasonable to wait and see what happens with Bitcoin. While the news seems dire to some analysts, a drop in 13% for bitcoin could almost be considered business as usual in terms of its usual volatility. The reality is that while it has fallen along with traditional stocks, the damage to the decentralized asset is not nearly as severe which for now leaves Bitcoin’s safe-haven status pending as we wait for more information to reveal itself over the coming weeks.

Twitter’s Decentralized Workforce Can Work From Home Forever Following COVID Lockdown

Twitter employees have been given the autonomy to choose when they will return to work once the social media giant’s offices open following the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown.

Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, told his employees on Tuesday 12 May, that many of them will be permitted to work from home for as long as desire, even after the coronavirus has subsided.

According to NBC, a spokesperson for Twitter said that the management will make the decision on when the offices reopen, however, “When and if our employees come back, will be theirs.”

Cooperation and Decentralization Makes it Happen

Dorsey said in an email that it was unlikely any of Twitter’s offices would open before the third quarter for this year. He also said that all events would be canceled for the remainder of 2020 to maintain social distancing efforts. In-person events will be reconsidered when Twitter designs its 2021 roadmap.

Twitter has maintained an emphasis on creating a highly capable and distributed workforce since its inception. The spokesperson reiterated this in the email, he said, “We were uniquely positioned to respond quickly and allow folks to work from home given our emphasis on decentralization and supporting a distributed workforce capable of working from anywhere.”

The evidence that Twitter can thrive and maintain its workflow in the pandemic lockdown condition has been proven over the last few months according to the spokesperson. She said, “So if our employees are in a role and situation that enables them to work from home and they want to continue to do forever, we will make that happen.”

BlueSky – Decentralized Social Media

Businesses across the nation are struggling to adapt to social distancing guidelines and Twitter’s new policy appears to be rethinking how businesses will operate in a post-pandemic world.

With the announcement of project BlueSky, in the works, it appears that they have also been rethinking how social media platforms should work and have emphasized that the new platform will be completely decentralized.

Dorsey has dedicated funds for this new project, which ultimately will put the social media platform onto a blockchain.

Equally, this will make way for censorship resistance and other intricate features that will grab the attention of today’s consumers. At present, the team working on the project, include independent architects and coders. Twitter is not claiming sole ownership of the project; instead, it will join the platform and assist it as an external protocol.

Coinbase CEO Avoids Mainstream Media, Prefers YouTube, Podcasts and Blogs

Brian Armstrong the Coinbase CEO, has joined the list of cryptocurrency executives who prefer to leverage their own blogs and platforms to distribute information to the media, as opposed to direct contact with any journalists.

Coinbase CEO, Brian Armstrong noted in a tweet that company leaders seem increasingly unwilling to engage with the mainstream media and prefer to use social media platforms like Youtube, Twitter, and their own blogs.

Coinbase CEO Circumvents Mainstream Media

According to the tweet discussion, Armstrong does believe that there are credible journalists in the media and that mainstream mediums still fulfill ‘an important role in society’. However, he asserts that he believes the best strategy is to build a network of a handful of respected journalists and use modern social platforms the majority of the time.

Armstrong weighed the value of going on a national TV program to promote his site, which he claims may generate 100 or so visitors; versus specialist tech publications which tend to drive traffic into the thousands.

Armstrong Not Alone as Crypto CEOs Show Support

Armstrong’s post did instigate a small discussion on Twitter regarding how other cryptocurrency executives and CEOs try to navigate the world of journalism and media communications.

Kraken’s co-founder Jesse Powell was onboard with Armstrong suggesting that too many journalists are out for a sensational click-bait headline. Powell said, “It’s a high risk, low reward relative to publishing your own content or doing a live podcast/video, which can’t be distorted.”

In contrast Catherine Coley, the CEO of Binance.US responded to the tweet in support of the ‘amazing storyteller’ in the mainstream media. 

 I actually believe in the press and how important it is. Yes, we can speak directly to current users now, but for advancing the industry it’s more about telling stories through amazing storytellers. We will continue to support them, especially our fearless crypto reporters.

Image via TechCrunch

Twitter Hack Goes Viral as Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Biden Hit by Massive Bitcoin Scam

Twitter has gone haywire as news of a Bitcoin scam hack targeting multiple high-profile figures such as Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Joe Biden, Jeff Bezos, and even multinational tech company Apple has broken out.  

The scammers that hijacked multitudes of verified Twitter accounts belonging to celebrities and key influential figures issued the same message across all platforms: 

“I am giving back to the community. All Bitcoin sent to the address below will be sent back doubled! If you send $1,000, I will send back $2,000. Only doing this for 30 minutes.”

This type of promise is a common technique used by crypto scammers to incite people to wire funds straight to their digital wallets. 

On Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s account, hackers posted a pinned Tweet entailing that the entrepreneur was going to double any Bitcoin (BTC) amount sent to his BTC wallet address. The multi-faceted entrepreneur is known to possess 0.25 Bitcoins. 

Ten minutes into the post, the wallet address displayed on Musk’s Twitter had already received 3.64 Bitcoins, which translated to $34 498 at the time of the reporting. The original tweet was soon deleted by Twitter Support. However, soon after the original post was removed, a new version popped up within seconds, clueing investigators into the fact that the Bitcoin attack was still ongoing.  

Donations to another Bitcoin address created by crypto scammers were said to have surpassed $100,000 in collected funds. 

After numerous influential Twitter accounts were discovered to be compromised — Kim Kardashian, Kanye West, Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Michael Bloomberg, Uber, Binance, Coinbase, to name a few— scam tweets were still up and running for more than an hour. 

Presidential runner Joe Biden’s official Twitter account was among those that were hijacked by scam artists. The scam was however contained and the post deleted within minutes. Chief executive of cybersecurity firm SocialProofSecurity Rachel Tobac addressed the issue and expressed her surprise as to Twitter not going “completely dark to prevent misinformation campaigns and political upheaval.” However, she said that it was a stroke of luck that the attackers were Bitcoin and money-motivated and not aiming for chaos and destruction. 

Twitter support then went on to temporarily prevent all verified accounts on their social media platform from tweeting for about half an hour. They tried to reassure their social media community by tweeting that they were working on the security incident and investigating further to fix the breach. Updates will soon be provided, Twitter Support posted. 

Exit mobile version