Posts

What Michael Saylor Thinks Can Improve Social Networks

avatar of @geekgirl
25
@geekgirl
·
·
0 views
·
6 min read

source

Have you been following Saylor Series on Youtube? If you haven't you probably should. Michael Saylor is one of the greatest thinkers in our times. If you have been in crypto space at least year you probably have heard his name. As of late he is know to be one of the loudest advocates for bitcoin. In fact, not only he went all in with his personal funds but also brought his company - MicroStrategy to invest into bitcoin with its treasury funds and even taking out loans to buy more bitcoin.

I have tremendous amount of respect for Michael. He probably is the only billionaire that I show genuine respect. I may be biased on this, but I do feel like he is the genius of our times. He is a rocket scientist by education, and a longest standing CEO of any public company in the history of the USA. But most importantly he has been the one who could explain what bitcoin is in the most simplest and the most complicated terms.

I have followed his thoughts and interviews for a while now. I have seen hours of videos, read his tweets, etc. I have never seen anybody who could explain the bitcoin and its future better than anybody. In the world wide web and the real life we see many to pose to be something they are not. Whenever there is some money or investment are involved there are scammers in the mix. That makes it hard to give their words any value and trust. But when I see someone who not only talks the talk, but also walks it. When I see someone who actually goes all in when talking about bitcoin, I do take them seriously. And Michael that person.

He is also the one who sold voice.com for $30 million to Dan Larimer. Lol. Who is smart and who is wasteful with money here? You decide. Imagine a visionary that foresaw the greatness of the internet beforehand and managed to obtain domain names at very cheap prices early on. Michael owns domain names like michael.com, saylor.com, etc. This alone shows how he was able to understand where technological future was heading too.

Of course there is more to talk about Michael. Like his company MicroStrategy that focuses on business analytics. Business Intelligence and Data Science are some of the trending fields these days. There is so much data, and everybody wants to derive meaningful insights from them. This is just the beginning for data. Michael has been in this field since the start, when Data Science wasn't even a thing.

Enough about Michael. Let's move on to what he had to say about social networks and how they can improve in his latest interview. If you would like to watch/listen the full interview of Saylor Series, episode 17 feel free to go to the following link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd1UFNvqwWQ&t=2040s

He starts talking about how social networks can be improved at 00:33:36. Of course, him being 100% into bitcoin, his thoughts about improving traditional social media has to do with application of bitcoin on layer two.

We on Hive believe that we have cracked the code for a better social networks and we do believe that Hive indeed is an alternative to the traditional ways social networking is done.

I am a strong believer in Bitcoin and Hive both. You will see me repeat the same thing over and over. As Bitcoin is an alternative for traditional financial system, Hive is an alternative to traditional social media.

According to Michael Saylor, one of the killer applications to social networks is verification and credit worthiness. In other words skin in the game. He believes that if already existing social networking apps like facebook, twitter, or tiktok were to adopt lightening network of bitcoin they can do better.

For example, he mentions that if any of the social networks have a separate identifier like blue checks on twitter and calls them orange checks with some kind of monetary amount put in as a security deposit, that may reduce spam and malicious behavior of participants. For this purpose he suggests they can implement lightening network for users to deposit some small funds to obtain orange checks which would give them some sort of credit worthiness. This amount can be decided by the social networks, $20, $30, $50, even a full bitcoin, etc. Of course full bitcoin would have a special kind of identifier. That way there would be consequences to bad behavior, spams, and bots.

Listening to this, I kept thinking "Michael, Hive already does that and working on improving that". On Hive, having Hive Power has meaning. It does give participants skin in the game. Moreover, to use the blockchain there is a need for resource credits which are determined by the amount Hive Power accounts have.

Of course, we see our fair share of spams on Hive. But they are not as bad as elsewhere, yet. As @edicted puts it the best in his thoughts about resource credits, as the user-base grows the cost of the bandwidth will increase as well. While Hive currently is handling tens and hundreds of thousands of participants, at its current stage perhaps it is possible to allow spam. But as these numbers go to millions and tens of millions the cost of transacting on hive will require participants to have decent amount of resource credits which means getting more Hive Power. Solutions are available with many more features bundled in Hive.

We probably wouldn't be able to bring someone like Michael Saylor to Hive, just because he is someone who is all in Bitcoin and would probably not consider any other options at this moment. We can always convey the message, whether they like it or not. So did I.

Feel free to listen to Saylor Series Episode 17 to fully understand what his thoughts are on improving social media/networks. You may also come to a conclusion that we are on a right path. What most of the people who think there can be improvement to social networks, may actually find are happening here on Hive. They probably are distracted with other actions to dedicate any time to the real progress here.

I believe most of the things Miachel is suggesting are already available to be used here on Hive. However, one thing did take my attention that can benefit Hive itself. That is a possibility of a network like Hive to plug in to larger networks like bitcoin.

One of our own Hive bees @brianoflondon has developed an application or a bridge named V4Vapp that enables Hive participants to transfer funds to and from bitcoin's lightening network. It is an awesome and a great use case for Hive. Ability of our network plugging into a bitcoin network and move funds back and forth adds great value. I didn't get a chance to explore it completely yet. As soon as I have time to focus I will.

But what I would really like to see a native bridge between Hive and Bitcoin. Hive has unique wallet features. Imagine an ability to Hive participants to store their bitcoins on Hive. That probably would require some sophisticated programming skills and desire of Hive devs to get involved with. I do see a great benefit for both networks with such solutions.

In theory I do think it is possible. Because Hive Decentralize Fund has already shown that there can be an account without anybody having an access to, and can function properly just fine. What if there was a similar kind of account that only held bitcoin and participant of Hive could easily move these bitcoins among themselves with zero fees just like Hive and HBD. And at any time they choose they can send bitcoin out of Hive network, bring more to the network. I think something like this could take Hive to the next level.

Moreover, what if Hive blockchain had an ability to buy and hold or buy and sell bitcoin based on proposal approvals or witness parameter settings? Something like this would enable our blockchain to leverage the global name recognition of bitcoin and its scarcity in supply.

Anyway, Bitcoin and Hive both are great networks and offer tremendous amount of value to their participants. Understanding one leads to better understanding the other. While Miachel may think bitcoin can be a solution to everything. Perhaps Hive can do social networking better. What do you think? Let me know in the comments.

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta