First published in August 2021
In recent days, the value of the Clout, which has so far been stable at $ 100, has dropped suddenly to $ 70. Why this fall? The administrators have not yet given an explanation but it can be assumed that this is linked to the listing of Clout by the exchange platform Coinbase which was supposed to take place in early September but which will be postponed until early October. We recall that the Clout fell from $ 185 to $ 105 when it was first listed by an exchange in June, in this case Blockchain.com. However, the situation was different today: the whales that had amassed gigantic volumes of Clouts since Bitclout's inception finally had the chance to take out some of their profits, and they did. Millions of dollars came out of Bitclout causing the value of the Clout to plummet.
As soon as trading on Blockchain.com opened in June, the whales took some of their profits out of Bitclout. @JamesHarbal shared this screenshot of a deal: a $ 12 million Clouts sale.
We suspect that these whales have speculated on the drop in the value of the Clout that the listing by Coinbase may cause.
Between August 10 and 23, Creator Coins sales volume was more than 3 times the purchase volume: $ 4.5 million in sales versus $ 1.4 million in purchases.
Indeed, it is more than likely that one of the listing conditions required by Coinbase is that the price of the Clout is defined by the market of supply and demand and is not supported by Bitclout. However, many people believe that the Bitclout Core Team was supporting the value of the Clout to prevent it from falling below $ 100 which could have scared the members away.
With the end or in any case the decrease in this support (the classic mechanism of which would be to maintain a demand at $ 100 by Bitclout's treasury, although @diamondhands denies having intervened), the Clout will now gradually find its real market value.
CLOUT AT $ 50 BEFORE ITS LISTING BY COINBASE ?
How far can the Clout drop?
After Clout drop on August 23, @MarioNawfal said : "I've been saying for weeks the real price of Bitclout based on the metrics is $50-$80"
After a month of stability at $ 100, the Clout fell sharply. Source: CoinMarketCap.
@Krassenstein also mentioned the $ 50 figure: "The Bitclout site has set the floor at $50 now instead of $100"
He asked @diamondhands for clarification.
@Krassenstein: "Hearing from the community I think one big question people want answered is: Was an artificial floor placed at $100 and if so was anyone aware that this floor would be removed at a specific time? There were a few large sales right before the floor broke. Did the sales cause the break or did the news that the floor would be removed cause the sales?"
@diamondhands replied that there was no artificial floor:
"Great question. We can't know for sure, but I think a lot of people were just buying CLOUT at $100. I bought a lot at that price myself, in addition to what was coming in from Gringotts, because I thought and still think it's a very low price. DEFINITELY nothing coordinated from my end though; I don't tell anyone when I'm buying (and I haven't sold a single CLOUT)."
The price of Clout have remained stable at $ 100 for a month in a completely natural way? Unheard of for a cryptocurrency! This "clarification" did not convince everyone.
We know the Core Team has artificially inflated the price of "Reserved" Creator Coins (see below), so why not inflate the price of the Clout? These are only speculations, but the opacity surrounding the management of the platform can only entertain these doubts.
DESPITE DIAMONDHANDS' "CLARIFICATIONS", OPACITY STILL REIGNS
Last month, I intended to dedicate Cloutzine issue 002 to the causes of the Clout price variation and the distribution of the total Clout volume among the Clouter population. I had to forgo this article because none of the people I contacted could give me the information I needed. The impression I got was that the topic was politically incorrect.
Today, questions are surfacing even in BitsTODAY which until now has always been careful not to rock the boat. Read their excellent special issue titled: BearClout: Playing Devil’s Advocate.
So I will still address the subject despite the lack of information, at the risk of saying inaccurate things. And if I say any, I'll be happy to correct them if the real info ends up coming out. The lack of transparency is in fact the very subject of this article.
This lack of transparency seems structural. It started from the genesis of the project with the choice of the founder and the Core Team to remain anonymous. No names, only nicknames.
This might be anecdotal if the pre-launch currency distribution had been transparently published, but it was not.
Where is the majority of the Clouts? No info.
Of course, since it's all on a public blockchain, the explorer allows us to see every transaction / event that has happened on BitClout from the start. All.
But this data is only visible to the developers and it seems that there is no desire to make public some of this information such as the distribution of the Clouts.
THE MAJORITY OF CLOUTS IN THE HANDS OF A FEW HOLDERS
A developper named @Shiro took the time to explore the data from the genesis of Bitclout and made this information public. Unfortunately, since his attitude was very antagonistic towards the boss of Bitclout, and Shiro's goal was to prove that Bitclout was a scam (which is not the case at all in this article), this information were not relayed on Bitclout and remained more or less “confidential” on Twitter.
Shiro had promised new revelations but stopped posting after this long twit.
In a very long article published on Twitter on March 26, @Shiro explains in 30 points the mining of Clouts, their distribution, the creation of "reserved" accounts and their artificial pumping:
- MINING OF 8 MILLION CLOUTS
On January 18, 8 million Clouts were mined [$ 560 million in current value, at $ 70 / Clout. This value reached $ 1.5 billion in June when the value of the Clout climbed to $ 190] - DISTRIBUTION OF THE CLOUTS BETWEEN 482 ACCOUNTS
This sum was split among 482 public keys / accounts. The allocation was not made evenly. Some keys got 100,000 Clouts while others got only 0.00001.
The distribution of the Clouts was carried out by two accounts named @master and @merlin.
Transactions show that @master was primarily used to distribute Clouts to influencer profiles, which were then all automatically used to buy their own coins.
@Merlin's job was to give 0.00002 Starter Clout to every new user who signed up - to pay gas fees for simple actions like updating profile or posting. - CREATION AND PUMPING OF 15,000 ACCOUNTS FROM TWITTER
On March 1 (18 days before the public launch), 57,784 transactions were recorded.
These transactions mainly consist of: BASIC_TRANSFER, UPDATE_PROFILE and CREATOR_COIN.
On this early stage, all those empty keys went through 4 transactions:
- got sent a bit of $BitClout for gas
- spent it to update profile as copied from Twitter
- got sent a larger amount
- spent it to buy their own coin
These operations were repeated 15,000 times for the 15,000 influencer profiles “reserved” on BitClout.
On March 11, each profile was given a larger amount, varying in an arbitrary fashion, so that they could purchase their own coin.
The top coin holders of the highest value Creators are mostly genesis public keys or accounts that have received pre-mined $BitClout from them
Genesis public keys that have updated their profiles are mostly investors and team members (including miners).
At the end of his article, Shiro had promised to update this thread later with:
- "how they process profile transfers (SWAP_IDENTITY)
- how BITCOIN_EXCHANGE works and how many Bitcoin have been converted to $BitClout
- how they price $BitClout
- and some other interesting stuffs"
Unfortunately, Shiro mysteriously stopped all posts on his Twitter account.
THE NEED FOR CHANGE
We know that today there are 10.6 million Clouts in circulation. We do not know their distribution but we can imagine, given the distribution of 8 million Clouts to 482 accounts that the majority of Clouts are held by a small handful of large carriers who acquired these Clouts when their value was minimal - from around a few dollars.
This concentration of Clouts in few hands is not healthy and does not encourage the confidence of future investors.
It would be desirable that the administrators of Bitclout transition towards more transparency about the distribution of Clouts but also towards a process of redistribution. This process began last month with @MarioNawfal’s “Million Dollar Week” campaign that promised to invest $ 1 million per week in active designer accounts. The campaign sparked renewed enthusiasm and turned the activity curve up on the platform. Unfortunately, these investments ceased abruptly after a few days and the curve flattened again to the bottom.
@MarioNawfal’s “Million Dollar Week” campaign in July ceased abruptly after a few days and the curve flattened again to the bottom.
WHAT WILL BE THE EFFECTS OF THE LISTING ON COINBASE?
Influencers on Bitclout are enthusiastic about the likely effects of the listing on Coinbase.
@MarioNawfal: "Usually it's a very big boost for a coin, at least when it's announced publicly."
@Krassenstein : “The drop in the price of the Clout might hurt right now, but this action is likely healthy for the future of the platform and the price.
Coinbase would have been insane to list Clout if the market was not 100% based on supply and demand.
A Coinbase listing will be huge for Bitclout. We aren't trying to minimize the Blockchain listing, but Coinbase does approximately 70X the daily crypto trading volume as Blockchain does.
The fact that Coinbase is currently running a BitClout node makes me think that BitClout could be integrated into Coinbase in multiple ways other than simply being exchanged on Coinbase.
🚀 Could you imagine what would happen to the $Clout price if they did this?
🚀🚀 Could you imagine how fast Bitclout's NFTs would reach critical mass if Coinbase listed them on their site in a new marketplace?
🚀🚀🚀 Could you imagine what would happen to this platform if Coinbase integrated social media into their exchange, using our blockchain?
The future is exciting!"
🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
THE ADVENTURES OF AL CLOUTONE
Al Cloutone decided to exchange a few diamonds before the listing on Coinbase.
@AlCloutone is a new character created by @PhilippeMeunier.
The NFT is available here.
THE HECTIC LIFE OF MR. CLOUTER
Mr Clouter comic strips are available in NFTs on @MrClouter.
TO BE CONTINUED IN OUR NEXT ISSUE
We hope you liked this issue. Please consider investing in @CloutZine !
Editor and drawings: @PhilippeMeunier
CloutZine is now also published on Medium platform for a more interactive experience.