Everyone’s favourite unpredictable billionaire, Elon Musk is once again making international headlines after Twitter accepted his offer to buy the social media platform outright.
Musk, who is already Twitter’s largest investor (he owns 9% of the company) has officially announced that he will buy the platform for $44 billion ($61 billion AUD) and take the company private to unlock its “tremendous potential.”
Any investor who owns shares in Twitter (TWTR) will be paid around $54.20 ($75.40 AUD) per share, which is nearly 40% more than Twitter was worth on April 1st — the day that Musk first went public with his ownership decision.
While all of these headlines are super gripping, and as complex debates around free speech begin to heat up, some of us just want to know – what will this mean for the cryptocurrency market?
There will be some big changes
Ol’ Musky is no stranger to stuffing around with crypto. In the past he’s seen billions of dollars flow in and out of sh*tcoins like DOGE and SHIB just by posting memes on Twitter and he’s even sent shockwaves through the global financial market after announcing that Tesla would buy Bitcoin.
So, it’s pretty safe to assume that over the next few weeks we will see some more, ever-unpredictable announcements from Musk that will have some effect on crypto.
On the more concrete side, there are some definite things we know about what Elon wants to do with the platform and we can make some reasonable guesses about their flow-on effects in the world of crypto.
Over the past few months these are the main things that Musk has made public note of changing include:
- Getting rid of spam bots
- Human authentication
- Making the algorithm open source
- New features
- Prioritizing free speech
The end of spam as we know it
Getting rid of crypto-related spam and bots would be an enormous win for the cryptocurrency market. As any #cryptotwitter user would know, the sheer volume of scams and fake information peddled by bots and nefarious actors on Twitter is practically inconceivable.
Kicking junk bots off the platform for good will reduce the number of scams, cut through the “noise” and help streamline focus on useful developments in the blockchain space — as well as making the overall user-experience of the platform much cleaner.
While all of this looks great on paper, getting rid of spam bots and “authenticating all humans” might prove to be a pretty major challenge, which could actually impact the crypto market negatively.
Balancing privacy & free speech
Anonymity and crypto tend to go hand in hand, with privacy being one of the main reasons Bitcoin was designed in the first place. It will be interesting to see how Musk balances requiring human authentication without taking away from the privacy that makes the Twitter platform unique from its competitors…
Secondly, his focus on free speech means that previously censored voices (*cough* Donald Trump) may have an opportunity to re-join the platform. While you might be thinking: ‘what on earth does unbanning Trump have to do with crypto?’ It’s worth remembering that much like Musk, Trump’s tweets also had the ability to move global markets.
RELATED: Elon Musk, The Internet’s Biggest Troll, Buys Twitter For $44 Billion
Not only that but prioritizing free speech means less shadow-banning and other forms of censorship which could see even more volatility added to the crypto market as accounts with big followings are more free to speak their minds…
How this deal could change the market
Moving beyond the changes, Musk’s decision to buy Twitter could have bigger implications for the crypto and stock market in terms of overall price movement.
The crypto market has been struggling since November last year, and with so much bearish outlook — all it would take is one small spark to ignite some action on the charts. This deal has already caused significant moves in the market, with the S&P returning its highest gains of the past weeks on the very same day.
So, if anyone can deliver crypto from salvation it’s a reasonable bet that it will be “The Dogefather” himself.
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