Elon Musk successfully closed the purchase of Twitter, and this has sparked joy for cryptocurrency enthusiasts that are aiming toward a decentralized social network.
On October 28, 2022, Musk used his Twitter profile page and tweeted, "The bird is freed," indicating that he has successfully acquired Twitter through a $44 billion deal.
Source: Elon Musk’s Twitter Page
The cryptocurrency space was already impacted by this, as the Dogecoin (DOGE) cryptocurrency saw a spike in its overall value. On October 28, DOGE was trading at $0.073. As of October 31, 2022, it is trading at $0.125. This is an increase in value of $0.052, or 71%.
Source: CoinGecko Chart for Dogecoin
Elon Musk is the Chief Executive Officer of Tesla as well as SpaceX. However, the main reason why Dogecoin saw a boost in value is due to the fact that Tesla began accepting the DOGE cryptocurrency as a payment option for its merchandise in early 2022, and Musk also launched a perfume brand that can also be bought with Dogecoin. But aside from this, how can the crypto space be impacted by this change?
Twitter’s Efforts Into Crypto So Far
The cryptocurrency exchange Binance invested $500 million into Musk's buyout of Twitter, and it is currently brainstorming numerous strategies as to how blockchain, as well as crypto, can aid Twitter.
Twitter also began exploring ways through which it can implement blockchain technology in its offering under the co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey.
Elon Musk has historically discussed how his goals with buying Twitter include creating an "everything app," where the main goal is to compete with giants such as WeChat in Asia, an app that lets users send messages but make payments as well, and even shop online or get a taxi ride.
“You basically live on WeChat in China because it’s so useful and so helpful to your daily life. And I think if we could achieve that, or even close to that with Twitter, it would be an immense success,” said Elon Musk in a Q&A with Twitter employees in June.
Musk has also been a heavy influencer of Dogecoin (DOGE), where he called the cryptocurrency the "people's crypto," and this turned a cryptocurrency that was a meme, that was created as a joke, into one of the largest cryptocurrencies in terms of market capitalization.
Then on October 27, 2022, Twitter made an announcement that it would let users buy, sell and display non-fungible tokens (NFTs) directly through tweets through a partnership with a total of four marketplaces.
This migration was dubbed "NFT Tweet Tiles" and displays the artwork of an NFT in a dedicated panel within a tweet, which can include a button to let users click through to a marketplace listing. The partners include the Solana-centric marketplace known as Magic Eden, the multi-platform NFT marketplace known as Rarible, the Flow blockchain creator Dapper Labs, and the sport-oriented platform Jump.trade.
It is clear that Twitter has already begun and would like to carry on in the future to add different ways through which cryptocurrencies can be used. So what can we expect going forward?
The Future of Crypto After Twitter Acquisition By Elon Musk
After this acquisition, we can expect a much higher level of adoption of cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrencies have already seen major levels of adoption across numerous industries, where they have become a means of payment for physical goods and services, but this development can boost things to a whole new level.
Musk said that his primary motivation for buying Twitter is to ensure the "future of civilization," where the goal is to preserve a “common digital town square,” where people with different beliefs can debate each of their views without resorting to violence.
However, with the historic push of NFTs within Twitter, and Musk’s consistent discussions surrounding cryptocurrencies, we can expect multiple things to come to Twitter.
If Twitter aims to be an "everything app," then it will need to fill multiple roles. Just as it aims to enable NFT functionality, it also needs to be able to store cryptocurrencies in the form of a wallet. We could see a lot more crypto-wallet integrations with Twitter as a result of this.
Aside from NFTs, we could see other blockchain-based integrations on Twitter as-well. This development could also spark a plethora of different Twitter-inspired decentralized social media platforms, where, unlike Twitter, users can just connect their cryptocurrency wallet to use them instead of having to connect an email, upload images, and provide other personal data.
A part of the crypto community has already seen this as a positive development towards the overall future of blockchain technology, as we will likely see Twitter itself implement blockchain to its platform in different ways, which could also spike interest from competing platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, Reddit and so on, all of which have already dived deep into NFTs.
Ultimately, the consequences of this move will be much more use-cases of cryptocurrencies outside of the crypto-specific decentralized applications (dApps), far more education and accessibility to blockchain technology, and a future where everyone might have the freedom to choose what kind of data they can share with the platforms. So if you are trying to find the perfect time to invest in cryptocurrencies, you might want to jump in soon, and you can utilize ZenDCA to automate this process.
We might also see numerous altcoins see a boost in their value and overall utility, especially low-cost tokens that have low transaction fees and can be a solid fit for daily transactions rather than being used as investment vehicles, the most notable examples here being stablecoins.