Is Twitter Getting Serious About Decentralized Social Media?

The Breakdown

Blockworks

Investing, Business

4.8 • 786 Ratings

🗓️ 19 August 2021

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On this episode of “The Breakdown:” Corporate dips into decentralized media, starting with Twitter and TikTok Regulatory difficulties continue for Binance Crypto on the minds of Congress and the SEC Big corporations have been seeing crypto not just as a hype machine, but as a technological update opportunity. Twitter, for example, has found a new lead for its decentralized social media group Bluesky. TikTok has similarly dipped into decentralized media as it struck a deal with decentralized music app Audius. Which platforms will take on crypto next? Binance continues to come under regulatory scrutiny with the Netherlands as the latest country to issue a warning to the company. Even after CEO Brian Brooks left the company citing “differences in strategic direction,” Binance founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao claims to continue to search for regulatory-minded people to join the company’s ranks. Regulatory focus continues in the U.S. as well, with members of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Congress hosting opposing opinions on how to regulate crypto. The disagreements continued this week, including a statement from the Fed’s Neel Kashkari bashing crypto and a letter from two congressmen requesting clarity from the SEC and CFTC. Will U.S. authorities ultimately come to an agreement on the best path forward? Enjoying this content? SUBSCRIBE to the Podcast Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1438693620?at=1000lSDb Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/538vuul1PuorUDwgkC8JWF?si=ddSvD-HST2e_E7wgxcjtfQ Google: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9ubHdjcnlwdG8ubGlic3luLmNvbS9yc3M= Follow on Twitter: NLW: https://twitter.com/nlw Breakdown: https://twitter.com/BreakdownNLW “The Breakdown” is written, produced by and features NLW, with editing by Rob Mitchell and additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Adam B. Levine is our executive producer and our theme music is “Countdown” by Neon Beach. The music you heard today behind our sponsor is “Tidal Wave” by BRASKO. Image credit: Cole Burston/Bloomberg/Getty Images, modified by CoinDesk.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW.
0:09.1	It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world.
0:16.2	The breakdown is sponsored by Nidig and produced and distributed by CoinDesk.
0:22.6	What's going on, guys? It is Wednesday, August 18th, and today's is a type of episode that is sorely overdue, a big news grab bag.
0:31.9	There have been a ton of stories recently that would normally fit in the brief, but the main stories I've been covering have been complex
0:38.4	enough that I just haven't had space to even do the brief. So here is a few of those stories
0:43.0	in slightly shorter form, and hopefully this gives you a good overview of some of the things
0:47.5	that have been happening. Let's start with a tweet from Maya Zahavi that connects the dots
0:51.9	on two stories I've been watching. She writes,
0:55.2	We're at the point where corporate America isn't just looking at crypto for hype marketing
0:59.1	opportunities, but is seriously studying the tech to gauge how it computes into their core
1:04.1	business. Two big social media examples from the past few days, Twitter and Blue Sky, and
1:09.3	TikTok and Audius.
1:15.1	So there is a ton to unpack here, so let's start with the news around Twitter.
1:19.0	In December of 2019, Jack Dorsey announced a new initiative.
1:23.0	Like Square Crypto, it would be a team whose mission was its mission.
1:25.8	In other words, it didn't have to impact Twitter's bottom line.
1:27.0	Dorsey wrote,
1:32.5	Twitter is funding a small, independent team of up to five open-source architects, engineers, and designers,
1:35.9	to develop an open and decentralized standard for social media.
1:39.4	The goal is for Twitter to ultimately be a client of this standard.
1:44.2	He basically said that in the early days, Twitter was so open that some thought it might become a decentralized Internet standard, like the SMTP email protocol.
	...

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