Seven-page whitepaper raises $160 million! Is social token BitClout the future, or a scam?

After issuing celebrity social tokens without authorization and experiencing an unexplained week-long outage, the 7-page whitepaper social network platform BitClout has come back online. Despite this, the highly controversial project continues to attract criticism, with a research director from foreign media describing it as "garbage," and allegations of being a scam project continue to ferment within the crypto community.

What is BitClout?

The new social networking platform BitClout has recently emerged in the crypto market, offering users the opportunity to trade social tokens of celebrities, public figures, and KOLs. According to the official whitepaper, BitClout claims to be an open-source project with no company endorsement, its own blockchain network, and advocates the concept of "everyone having coins."

In simple terms, the BitClout platform allows users to trade tokens representing both coins and people. If an investor believes in the future development of a certain influencer or celebrity, they can purchase that person's social token early on using BitClout tokens. However, currently, BitClout tokens can only be purchased with Bitcoin and there is no way to sell them.

If the platform gains popularity in the future and more investors flock in, the increasing demand for BitClout tokens could drive up the token price. For every million BitClout tokens sold, the token price will double.

BitClout Controversies

Controversies surrounding BitClout include:

• Unauthorized issuance of social tokens for celebrities
• Lack of selling channels raising suspicions of fraud
• Controversial Twitter marketing tactics
• Unfair token distribution

After selecting 15,000 celebrities, BitClout launched the project, where these celebrities must post relevant content on Twitter to "claim" their profiles and tokens on BitClout, as shown below.

Currently, most celebrity accounts on the platform remain unclaimed, marked with a small clock icon next to their names. However, as shown below, TRON founder Justin Sun, who always courts controversy, has claimed his account and is among the top 10.

However, early platform user Scriptmoney.eth pointed out on Twitter:

Justin Sun was not on the initial list of 15,000 people but registered and purchased a large amount of BitClout tokens to elevate himself to the top ten list.

Crypto Community Perspectives

Foreign media research director Larry Cermak's recent tweet has sparked attention to the project. He mentioned that he did not participate, but by purchasing a small amount of tokens, he traced the project's funds' whereabouts. The tokens sold so far have raised over 2,746 Bitcoins, equivalent to 158 million USD.

Larry stated:

Because of their garbage marketing tactics, every celebrity account that wants to claim must tweet the platform's link. It's an incredible scam, and everyone should stay away from this garbage project.

Because of their trashy growth hacking bullshit, every account that wants to verify their account has to tweet the direct link to it. Probably better to stop doing it, this is all incredibly scammy even if it has real people behind it. Stay away from this garbage

— Larry Cermak 🫡 (@lawmaster) March 17, 2021

Messari co-founder Qiao Wang, on the other hand, took a more relaxed stance. He believes:

It's controversial to have a token whose price fluctuates for everyone, but controversy is good. This project is likely to take off, but the inability to sell tokens makes it look very much like a scam.