Elon Musk is the largest share holder of Twitter: What this means for the platform's future
Elon Musk, the richest person in the world and founder of Tesla and SpaceX, went forward with his plan and bought over 9% of Twitter shares becoming overnight the largest individual shareholder in the company. After the announcement the shares of Twitter shot up by 25%!
The decision of Elon, who is a self ascribed free speech absolutist, to buy shares in Twitter came after a poll he conducted asking whether Twitter adheres to free speech principles and telling his followers to think and vote carefully. In a way he was preparing his followers for what was to come, with many speculating that he was preparing his own social media. Being, one of the most followed content creators in Twitter with more than 80 million followers, his reach has been massive.
In terms of Twitter, we will definitely see some pushback in regards to how and why users have their access limited or are outright banned. Elon, has been one of the most recognized figures to publicly criticize Jack Dorsey and Twitter for banning users. After the ban of the Babylon Bee satirical news site, he contacted privately the satirical page's founder & CEO to inquire about the reasons behind the ban.
His interest in Twitter can be attested by the decision of Musk to join the company's board of directors. Already, his addition to the board has been linked to new changes in the social media platform. Twitter, that for years had been against having an editing button for your tweets, announced that it was actively working on developing one. For once, the timing of this announcement is linked to Elon's influence, as he has complained a number of times for the inability to edit your tweets if you made any spelling errors, or wanted to change something. Keeping users happy and taking their feedback at heart is something well established in the company culture of Tesla that will carry over to Twitter.
In terms of crypto, Musk is known for holding Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Dogecoin and being in favour of a multicoin future. I would expect that he will add the dog themed meme token in the Twitter tip jar. Likewise, since he is more open to a multi-coin future, with different tokens serving different purposes, I wouldn't be surprised if Bitcoin Cash and other tokens are added to the tipping jar or are utilized in another way. For what it is worth, Elon could see reason on the utility of Bitcoin Cash as a crypto token which is low - fee and offers instant transactions, thus serving as digital cash.
Another issue where we can see some changes taking place is that of NFT profile pics. Since, its launch he has been critical against the initiative of adding NFT profiles, for which he can exert some influence either to have it reversed, or maybe expand the number of different chains available for their NFT Profile Pictures (PfP) on Twitter.
Last, one of the issues Musk has been vocal against is that of spammers, scammers, and bots trying to impersonate people and/or scam them from their crypto/money. I would expect that he will lobby for a way to establish digital identities that are verified and linked to our accounts. NFT technology can be used for that. Expect that a barrier will be set making it harder for scammers and bots to by-pass it. This barrier could be a one-time subscription in the form of NFT that will become the users' social/twitter identity and will be non-transferable.