Last Wednesday, the world’s richest man… and one of its most famous online trolls… made a hostile takeover bid for Twitter (TWTR).
He offered to pay $54.20 a share for the social media platform.
That’s 21% more than Twitter’s current share price. And it values the company at $43 billion.
Musk is on a mission…
In a TED Talk in Vancouver hours after he announced his bid, he said it was “very important for there to be an inclusive arena for free speech.”
But as we’ve been arguing in these pages, Twitter isn’t it.
A CEO and a board of directors control what happens on the platform. They can quash any tweets they don’t like. And they often do…
We don’t know what steps Musk will take if his corporate raid succeeds.
But if he wants the platform to have free speech, he should follow the advice of our tech expert, Jeff Brown, and rebuild it using Web 3.0 technology.
Web 1.0 was the first generation of the internet that started in the late 1990s.
It had dial-up modems… static web pages… hyperlinks… and not much else.
Web 2.0 came next. Faster broadband connections in the late 2000s made video streaming possible. We also saw the birth of social networks.
Web 3.0 will add blockchain to Web 2.0’s foundation. Blockchain is the decentralized technology that underpins bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptocurrencies.
And as Jeff has been showing his readers, Web 3.0 will be an upgrade of today’s internet – one that makes it freer, more open, and censorship-resistant.
That’s vital given the control Big Tech companies such as Twitter, Facebook/Meta (FB), and Google (GOOG) have over the information you get online.
We’ll get into that… and why blockchain tech is the best way to foster free speech online. Plus, I’ll share with you one of Jeff’s top ways to play it.
First, some background for newer readers.
Instead of having one copy of records in one centralized place, there are thousands of perfect copies across the network.
And because it’s decentralized, no one person or entity can censor what others add to the database.
Blockchains are also cryptographically secured. So nobody can tamper with the data they hold.
And as Jeff has been showing his readers, Web 3.0 apps are already disrupting many of the centralized online services we use today.
For example, the Brave web browser now competes with Google Chrome and Apple Safari. Filecoin competes with cloud-based file storage company Dropbox (DBX). And Web 3.0 video chat apps Status and Experty compete with Zoom (ZM).
Jeff is particularly excited about Web 3.0 versions of Big Tech social media platforms such as Twitter.
It’s a blockchain-based social media platform. And it aims to solve many of Twitter’s problems.
I talked with Jeff about it last December ahead of the launch of our Unchained Profits advisory. (That’s where Jeff shows paid-up subscribers how to profit from best-in-breed Web 3.0 projects. You can learn more about it here.)
The first problem is censorship. Jeff…
Twitter has been removing posts and banning people who share opinions contrary to the “correct” political narrative. Aave will protect speech against the threat from Big Tech censors because it’s decentralized. That means no one person gets to say which posts get published and which don’t.
The second problem is that the folks who post to Twitter and make the platform so popular don’t share in the company’s profits. Back to Jeff…
It’s hard for content creators to make money from their posts on Twitter. They spend time and effort putting out content and building followings. This output has a dollar value to Twitter. But there’s no way for those content creators to directly tap into it. Twitter users must send their followers to independent products or services to generate revenue from their social media work.
Aave hasn’t released specifics yet. But it says it will enable users to earn crypto for quality content.
With Twitter, your tweets and followers technically belong to the company. If you move to another platform, you have to start all over again.
But in the Web 3.0 model, there’s no CEO who can lock you into one platform. Decentralized social media apps will allow you to bring your content and your followers with you.
Blockchain tech also allows platforms to verify a user’s identity at sign-up. Jeff says this will stop fake accounts that exist to spew garbage.
And if you’ve ever used Twitter or Facebook, you’ll know this is a constant problem.
At the end of 2019, its founder and former CEO, Jack Dorsey, founded another company called Bluesky.
Its mission is to build a decentralized version of the platform.
And in March, it hired its first employees.
There’s even the possibility that Musk, if he succeeds in his bid to take over Twitter, will decentralize the platform.
Charles Hoskinson is the founder of the popular Cardano (ADA) blockchain. He says he’s willing to help Musk build a decentralized version of Twitter.
Most of the mainstream coverage of Musk’s bid misses this key point. But we’re seeing Jeff’s vision for Web 3.0 start to go mainstream.
Jeff has been immersing himself in Web 3.0 research.
Not only has he launched an advisory all about how to profit from this version of the internet… He’s also spoken with a group of U.S. senators about a new digital dollar.
He’s even traveled to Israel on a U.S. Certified Trade Mission on blockchain and digital payments.
That makes him the perfect guy to turn to for insight on how play this tech trend. Here he is on that…
First, I recommend you take the time to educate yourself and invest in digital assets that are solving real-world problems. These will be your safest way to profit from the blockchain revolution.
Readers who want to add blockchain investments to their portfolios should consider ether (ETH). You can buy it directly on an online crypto exchange such as Coinbase (COIN).
I recommended ETH to paid-up subscribers of my Near Future Report tech investing advisory in November 2017. Already, folks who followed that recommendation are up 582%.
Ether is the token native to the Ethereum blockchain. And the Ethereum blockchain is the architecture for the next generation of decentralized apps, including Aave.
For folks who already own bitcoin, that’s a good next step in blockchain investing.
And if you don’t own any bitcoin yet, make sure to add some to your portfolio first. As I wrote last week, colleague Teeka Tiwari says it’s on its way to $500,000 by 2025.
Until tomorrow,
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Chris Lowe
April 18, 2022