"BitClout sits in the middle: It leverages the same moderation scheme that governed the pre-Facebook internet, which we think deters harmful content without stifling innovation and competition."

"I like to give the analogy that there is a spectrum of how decentralized the internet can be."

"By building a custom blockchain we can have all the code and all of the data totally open which creates a much more competitive ecosystem for third party apps."

"A cryptocurrency platform that lets you bid up (and down) the monetary value of users’ social identities, BitClout had quickly become the most controversial innovation in social media since Snapchat."

"They believe that an open, blockchain-based organization where the direction is set by the community with no corporate entity to compete with — or be shut down by — will outcompete social media’s traditional ads-driven business model."

"A big part of what attracted Sequoia’s Shaun Maguire to BitClout was Diamondhands’ passion to build a new kind of trust platform at a time when public trust in technology is low."

"It’s an open and decentralized platform where people can invest in each other."

"It’s similar to Twitter and Instagram, but every creator has their own coin that allows you to invest in them. And every creator has the ability to earn money in all kinds of novel ways, from tips to NFTs."

"In early 2019 I got really excited about the concept of mixing investing and social media and I started by studying every product I could find that had attempted to mix two in the past."

"I realized that instead of the ad-driven social network business model, we could monetize via transactions flowing through the network, which is more like what drives the value of Bitcoin and Ethereum."

"What do you say to criticism about associating BitClout value to people’s likeness without their permission (i.e., Elon Musk’s unclaimed creator coins)?"

"We pre-created accounts for the top 15,000 people on Twitter, and the main reason we did this was to prevent name-squatting and impersonation, which is typically rampant in early social platforms that don’t take a thoughtful approach to it."

"In addition, we allowed anyone who didn’t want their profile listed to request it be taken down simply by messaging the @bitclout handle on Twitter, as mentioned in our FAQ."

"The long term vision is that the front end of BitClout, how people access and use it, will be very decentralized."

"Could BitClout eventually be an all-in-one platform for creators that rolls up all the functions of Patreon, SubStack, and other crowdfunding and NFT sites?"

"The platform is decentralized, so it’s everybody who’s the best at what they do creating the apps for the social network."

"Investing in creators before they’ve been discovered is an inherently value-creating activity both for the creator and the follower, and it’s the core behavior that BitClout enables."

"The development team behind BitClout is anonymous because we think it inspires the community to decentralize faster."

"BitClout is not a company and it doesn’t have a CEO or a board. It’s just code and data, and we want to make sure the community feels as empowered as possible to improve it and build on top of it."

"There’s a guarantee, literally in the same way that you can’t lose access to Bitcoin, you can’t lose access to BitClout. So it’s the same architecture and therefore the same guarantees."