The looming court battle is unlikely to happen. Elon Musk will buy Twitter after all, at the original asking price. The ambitious billionaire and cryptocurrency enthusiast reportedly has some plans to turn the social networking giant into his version of Web3. We take a look at his ideas.
Elon Musk wants to base Twitter on the blockchain
We know about Elon Musk’s overweening ambitions for Twitter thanks to leaked messages between the billionaire and Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of the social network. On April 9, the billionaire explained:
“I had an idea for a blockchain-based social network system that would do both payments and short messages/links, like Twitter. “
The idea would be to charge users for posts, for a pittance of a fraction of a cent. This would have very little impact on regular users, but it would prevent scammers from sending too many messages.
“You should pay maybe 0.1 DOGE per comment or repost. “
Elon Musk sees the blockchain as a tool to resist censorship. On April 14, he explained that he had a “plan B” for “a blockchain version of Twitter. “
Integrate Twitter into the enigmatic “super app” X
But since then, the deal with Twitter had fallen through, and a long legal battle was looming. Until Elon Musk decided to buy the social network again. Will we then see Twitter integrated into a blockchain?
Not necessarily, if we are to believe a brief message sent by Elon Musk on 25 April. In the end, he felt that “a Twitter on the blockchain is not possible” because of scaling issues. Will the role then be taken by ‘X’, his enigmatic app that is supposed to serve a wide range of needs? The billionaire hinted that the social network would be a cornerstone of this new project:
Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 4, 2022
So this “super app” could well engulf the social network. When asked about the need to integrate Twitter rather than create a social network, Elon Musk replied that this could speed up the development of X “by 3 to 5 years”.
As Elon Musk is particularly changeable in his communications, this cannot of course be taken as a definitive project. But it does show the ambitions of the billionaire, who presumably wants to integrate a social network with a payment system, based on blockchain technologies.
