Binance wants to use crypto to solve Elon Musk’s supposed bot problem

by Arthur · October 28, 2022

Binance founder and CEO Chinese-born Canadian Changpeng Zhao.

Newly minted Twitter owner Elon Musk isn’t letting up on his migraine-inducing complaints about bots using his Twitter feed. Now, less than a day into ownership, he has reportedly decided to transfer part of the vexing problem to one of the biggest names in crypto.

Binance, the massive crypto exchange that reportedly invested $500 million against Musk’s Twitter takeover, says it will work with the social media company to explore how crypto and blockchain technologies can be used to reduce the prevalence of bots online.

Binance explained its early plans to work with Twitter in a statement sent to the crypto publication Decrypt. The company said it is creating an internal team to “focus on ways blockchain and crypto can be useful for Twitter and [is] actively brainstorming plans and strategies that can help Elon Musk realize his vision.” The spokesperson speculated that Binance could potentially build “on-the-chain” solutions to address the proliferation of bots. Binance is apparently “in the early stages” and trying still figuring out a plan, which could mean they have a clue of some idea or really could mean absolutely nothing at all.

Binance did not immediately respond to Gizmodo’s request for comment.

The Binance partnership expands Musk’s months-long complaint about bots on the platform, which he tried to use as an excuse to back out of the $44 billion deal to buy the company. After initially agreeing to the deal, Musk got cold feet and tried to argue that Twitter hadn’t actually provided enough details about the actual number of bots on the platform compared to real people. He claimed the proliferation of bots, which have been widely known by just about anyone who has used the platform for years, constituted a “clear material breach” of the merger agreement. Twitter splurged and gave Musk unprecedented amounts of user data to verify the bot numbers for himself, then presented him even more data but apparently none of that was enough.

Twitter eventually sued Musk for trying to release its legally binding agreement with them. Things only got worse for Musk after that. During the lawsuit against Musk, Twitter’s lawyers filed legal briefs that mocked Musk’s claims about the bots as “factually inaccurate, legally insufficient and commercially irrelevant.”

“Musk invents representations that Twitter never made and then attempts to use, selectively, the extensive confidential data Twitter provided him to conjure up a violation of those alleged representations,” Twitter’s lawyers wrote. “Yet Musk simultaneously and incoherently claims that Twitter breached the merger agreement by shutting down his requests for information,” the social media company continued.

Now, Musk left to own a struggling social media company that we don’t know if he actually wanted in the first place. Bots and all.

While Twitter is certainly not a “crypto” company by any means, it’s not completely removed from the concept either. In 2019, under former CEO Jack Dorsey’s leadership, the company began work on Bluesky, a so-called “decentralized social media platform” that would, in theory, allow multiple social media platforms to operate on the same standard. Dorsey, who was officially kicked out of Twitter earlier this year, joined Bluesky’s board back in February. Last year, Twitter officially created an internal crypto team tasked with exploring Bitcoin tips, monetization opportunities through NFTs, and other areas. Twitter also recently allowed paid subscribers to add NFTs as profile pictures.