What is BitClout, the cryptocurrency of celebrities

After the artwork and sneakers, it was only a matter of time before the cryptocurrency world shifted to humans. Officially presented as a social network with the ability to invest in people and posts through real money, BitClout allows its users to purchase an asset renamed Creator Coins, a digital currency linked to a list of celebrities ranging from Elon Musk to Kanye West, up to creators and youtubers like Logan Paul and Jake Paul. The value of the Creator Coins can vary according to the social clout of the person they refer to in a real bag conditioned by the social perception around VIPs and celebrities. For example, if BitClout had existed last year, the value of Kanye West's Creator Coins would have grown to coincide with the announcement of his deal with Gap, while those of Logan Paul would have lost value when he filmed a lifeless body in 2018. for a Youtube video.

Described as "NFTs for people", BitClout rather resembles the natural meeting point between the world of social media and that of cryptocurrencies by leveraging a bubble that allows a tweet to make hundreds of people lose real money and thus adding further pressure on a world that is already at the limit such as that of celebrities and their relationship with social media. The real question behind BitClout, however, is more ethical than economic and that is whether it is legal for someone to make money by exploiting people without them having given their consent. Many of the 15,000 celebrities called into question have not in fact given authorization to transform their profile into a possible virtual gold mine, while the BitClout policy seems almost an obligation to follow the rules of their game. According to the FAQ published by the social network, each influencer can claim their account simply by tweeting their BitClout public key, thus having access to their data on the site and a percentage of the Creator Coins associated with their profile.

Adopting Bitcoin's aesthetic to raise VC funding to carry out unethical and blatantly illegal schemes like @nadertheory's @Bitclout_: not cool pic.twitter.com/dZQjtOMMGt
— Brandon Curtis (@bcmakes) March 24, 2021

Just a few days ago Brandon Curtis of Radar Relay sent a legal notice to BitClout creator Nader Al-Naji for using his name and other information without any permission, effectively turning a person into an economic asset without the latter's consent. last. The action of Curtis in addition to creating an important precedent makes the BitClout mechanism even more evident, which someone did not exist to call "scam", in which to collect part of an economic amount earned by someone using our data we are forced to be part of the same mechanism that generated profits by "stealing" our identity. If the NFT phenomenon could have seemed the apex of the cryptocurrency bubble, BitClout definitely resembles a dystopian experiment that wants to bring our perception of money and social dynamics towards the point of no return.