BOSTON, MA - Twitter (NYSE: TWTR) announced on Monday that it has accepted Elon Musk's $44 billion offer to take the company private. That means that Tesla's CEO and world's richest person will soon hold the keys to a platform used by more than 200 million people daily and is at the center of many cryptocurrency conversations and debates.
How might Musk's Twitter ownership affect the digital asset landscape?
We asked the Sarson Funds cryptocurrency analyst team for their take on which digital assets might benefit from Twitter's ownership change. Here's what they said:
Zachary Profeta, Portfolio Manager: Arweave (AR)
"When asked why he made an offer to purchase twitter and take the company private, Elon Musk states, 'It’s very important to have an inclusive arena for free speech. Twitter has become the default town square. It’s really important for people to have the reality and perception they can speak freely in the boundaries of the law. They should open source the algorithm and when changes are made to people’s tweets, that action should be made apparent to keep those actions public.' Elon’s description of the changes Twitter needs to take are quite similar to the utility of a blockchain. Arweave (AR) has the unique opportunity in leveraging a platform's need for increased censor-proof mechanics and assurance of longevity for the information stored. Arweave allows users to make a one-time payment in the form of AR tokens to host whatever data they have on the Arweave Permaweb. Arweave offers permanent storage of both public and private data that can be accessed at any time all while being validated by miners supporting the network. We have seen a major increase in the number of accounts being “shadow banned” and deleted from Twitter. Everyone has seen how detrimental censorship and loss of data and history can be for all communities involved. Throughout the entirety of human existence, there’s history that is lost and no way to go back in time and see what really happened at a given moment besides reading what people of those times recorded. Arweave is the solution to permanent storage and censor-proofed platforms the world needs to be able to tell our story in years and centuries to come. At the end of the day don’t you want your contributions to the Town Hall protected forever?”
Jonathan Cagle, Portfolio Manager: Dogecoin (DOGE)
“Love him or hate him. Elon, DOGE and Twitter go together like peanut butter and jelly. In the past few years, DOGE (and Elon) have proven how impactful the community backing a crypto project can be for its price potential. TSLA and DOGE have two of the most polarizing, but incredibly loyal fanbases in both the TradFi and Crypto markets, and both have made waves on Twitter over the years with their price movements in the wake of Elon’s tweets. Now Elon owns the platform.
As of this writing, DOGE is already up 14% and the daily trading volume is up ~429% in the last 12 hours.”
Jenny Mongan, Research Analyst: Ethereum Name Service (ENS)
“Under Elon I believe Twitter will start to leverage the technology offered by the Ethereum Name Service (ENS). ENS is an Ethereum-based naming system for web page routing and digital identity/NFTs that specifically focuses on making the decentralized web - web3 - easier for users. Simply put, ENS gives the opportunity of having a single Ethereum-based username for all wallets/addresses of a holder, providing scaling solutions for the Ethereum network that enable security and censorship protection better than any traditional source. In the near future, ENS identities stored in Ethereum wallets will connect users to Twitter and many internet applications. Sign-in functionality with ENS will help the Ethereum network achieve its vision for a decentralized internet through the parallel internet ENS provides to connect blockchain technology to the open world.”
David Gamble, Portfolio Manager: Decentralized Social (DESO)
“Putting more power back into users and the creator, DESO is the first and only Layer 1 blockchain purposely built from the ground up to scale decentralized social apps to billions of users worldwide. DESO provides great mechanics for decentralized social media because of the strength of its blockchain solutions compared to traditional social media frameworks, especially with its hypersync scaling solution.
With news breaking that Elon Musk will be acquiring Twitter for $44 billion, the possibilities are endless for where he could lead Twitter. One likely change is that twitter may be moving towards web3 consensus mechanisms. Elon recently tweeted “I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means,” potentially implying Twitter's new direction to be a more decentralized ecosystem that does not incentivize gate keepers to “mistakenly” ban certain targeted users or coincidentally remove tweets.
Storing content on-chain is a key performance metric indicator that will allow Elon Musk and Twitter to do exactly what they are potentially seeking to do and become more decentralized. The DESO blockchain provides a strong decentralized model for Twitter to learn from, is already equipped to handle billions of users, and has the ability to store users' data on-chain.”
Note: As of publication date, Sarson Funds' products have allocations to Arweave, Dogecoin, Ethereum Name Service, and Decentralized Social.
