why is Elon not interested in protocols? He really believes his single company X will handle half of the worlds transactions? Look at what happened with PayPal: they can and will freeze your account for any reason. This would be dystopian hell, worse than CBDCs.

Replies (55)

MindMining's avatar
MindMining 2 years ago
Yes, it's the same stuff all over again, but with a new name.
Because a protocol means openness and cooperation. Controlling a large portion of the world's communications and transactions means massive profit, access to huge amouts of data and leverage. Why do centralists centralize? Power.
It is insanely ignorant and/or arrogant. The solution is right in front of him. Just use it and let humanity innovate and flourish. Maybe it is just all greed? Greed is a hell of a drug.
Billionaires are banking on lobbying and policy making to maintain status quo or at least protect their wealth. I see how this will be a tough transition for general public to trust in themselves to manage their money. We have had thousands of years of custody providers like banks. The Psyche is not there yet.
I think he just wants to see the highest revenue numbers possible. Open protocols aren't benefiting the company as strongly I suppose.
Ugly Dumpling's avatar
Ugly Dumpling 2 years ago
I wonder what’s going on behind the scenes, Saudi wise.
closed's avatar
closed 2 years ago
Elon is a hostage so he constantly tries to prove that he is not!
Sasha's avatar
Sasha 2 years ago
I wouldn’t stress it. Not gonna happen under X.
Bison's avatar
Bison 2 years ago
This is what I keep saying, he hated the establishment so he built his own
If he was in it for only the money he could have built less risky companies. Maybe I was naive to think he actually wanted to advance society instead of bringing more totalitarian rule, or that he was smarter than this.
It's pretty clear Elon doesn't believe in digital sovereignty (just look at Tesla's, Tesla maintains full control of your vehicle after you "buy" it). Complete speculation here but as he's obviously a smart guy so I assume he's thought about it and it and it seems like his view is that there will always be some central authority controlling things. So instead of trying to fight that, he wants to have as much of that power as possible so he can control things the way he wants instead of the way someone else wants. For example Twitter is still chalk full of censorship but they're censoring things slightly differently than they used to (more in line with Elon's world view). Part of this is probably true in that there will always be large power discrepancies as people are not equally capable and will use different strategies to acquire power, which will have varying rates of success, and they will then build motes around that power. But I think where he is wrong is to give up entirely on decentralizing power and maintaining free and open competition for it. I also think there's not an actual reason to expect he would want to help achieve these goals. Elon is a grifter. Remember when those kids were stuck in that cave and Elon inserted himself into the situation and was acting like he was gonna come up with a solution? He gets in on whatever is trending and uses it to promote himself. When Bitcoin is pumping he'll do some random pro Bitcoin virtue signalling like accepting payments at Tesla for a month or tweeting out some anti-fiat memes. He'll go one about how AI is going to enslave us all, only to make a completely closed off AI that he controls instead of making something open that individuals could actually take true ownership of and shape how they want / use to defend themselves against malicious AIs. TLDR: I respect a lot of what Elon has accomplished but I'm also not into this fanboy shit, we need to accept he ain't gonna help with this. If anything he might he'll actively hurt.
Moving X onto nostr would be a win win. Would be the same app with all its problems, but could retain users and (approved) content while letting users speak freely (on the wider protocol) and transact freely. Appease the overlords without kneecapping the people. On board many to bitcoin and decentralized. No brainer.
dwarner5522's avatar
dwarner5522 2 years ago
I agree with what you wrote. I think now that he made the investment into buying twitter as well he wouldn't support anything that would undermine twitters control over the space. As far as bitcoin goes... I think there might be a little bit of narcissism there in that he didn't know about it early and so he's trying to prop up dogecoin instead so he can feel he had a hand in its success or something. He definitly likes to have first hand control over things... kinda like Steve Jobs.
He made the worst business decision of his live acquiring Twitter. He is trying to remediate it and for that he needs to control every single penny.
Could it be a little of both? He could believe he is advancing society but also believe his way is the "right way" of doing so? At the end of the day, he needs money to advance his interests so that also has to fuel his thought process and decision making in some capacity.
Keeping those people's content. Running ads on content propagated from the protocol. Instead of losing every post from someone with one spicy take, you just don't show the banned take. There's value there for him.
This. If you make an open protocol that let you find willing drivers in your area, for eg, that are willing to deliver/drive for a certain fee, and pay them directly with lightning, how many companies' primary use cases vanish immediately? Yet that was probably the initial prospect and excitement around the internet, and instead we now have a situation where private companies own the ability to do everyday tasks.
Vic's avatar
Vic 2 years ago
He has to plug in a very large userbase from day #1. Protocols not able to assist
That is the GOAL do you not understand? KYC EVERYTHING everything on a blockchain with no privacy-enhancing technologies to obfuscate transactions to achieve anonymity and fungibility.
it’s possible he is just a webboomer. maybe he can’t see outside the legacy monolith model no one is immune from getting stuck in a paradigm.
Default avatar
IAM 2 years ago
Well let’s be honest… he’s at the top of his game. He’s the centre of attention. He’s aiming to be remembered & any selfish man would
For my opinion his management looks so weird. P.S. I am not smart in IT area.
Ere.TK's avatar
Ere.TK 2 years ago
he's reeeeeaaaally friends with govts, so it's pretty natural for him to be in bed with them
R's avatar
R 2 years ago
Power