034. Mining BitClout: “There’s gold in them thar hills.”
Want to make sure you’re onboard as we keep hurtling through the Clouti-verse? Don’t forget to sign up for our Substack HERE. We deploy every edition (and special features) over there, too.🐋
Howdy friends.
Happy Monday. Another day, another massive BitClout drop. @diamondhands and co are absolutely making it rain these days, sending 💦💦 our way hand over fist. Trying to keep up with the deluge? We’re here for you. In today’s @BitsTODAY edition, we’re heading underground into the mines with a deep-dive on all things mining related. Computers and other nerd coding stuff not your jam? No sweat, we’ve got some other cuts from across the clout-iverse for you too. Let’s take the plunge 🤿, shall we?
Guest cover designed by @All_things_creative
Bits on the menu today:
BuzzClout: Exclusive look at today’s movers and shakers presented by @bitcloutsignal
Ubiquitous UX Drops: INTO THE MINES!
Decentralized Media vs. Boomer Media: @HighKey invades USA Today
General Absurdity: @Doodles Derby 🏇
BitsTODAY Podcast: Hey @charliehilton, “Yew sound like you’re from London!”
Diamondhands’ drops 💎
#1 BuzzClout
First things first. In partnership with @bitcloutsignal, here’s an exclusive look at today’s movers and shakers:
#2 Ubiquitous UX Drops: INTO THE MINES!
This week’s drops from the core team? Put your hard hats on and grab a ⛏️, we’re going mining. Ok ok, maybe what we need is NVIDIA graphics cards, not a 19th century West Virginian miner lifestyle. We’re good with that (*wipes coal dust from eyes*).
After dropping all of the BitClout code on our heads last week, earlier today, @diamondhands and team opened up $bitclout mining instructions to everyone, including us non-technical plebeians:
Hold up. Before we get any further, let’s clarify: What’s the purpose of mining on Bitclout? It’s the same as for many other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin — to maintain and develop a blockchain ledger of all transactions on a network. Miners perform ‘work’ that allows for new blocks to be ‘built’ and added to the blockchain network, thereby forming consensus around which transactions happened and in what order.
Previously, all the mining needed to maintain and develop the Bitclout blockchain was performed by a small set of trusted miners in coordination with the core Bitclout team. For these miners who were in on the early-action, mining has been lucrative, notes @tijn:
Now however, anyone with GPU to spare and the right systems can mine Bitclout and contribute to the formation of the new blocks on the Bitclout blockchain.
Per @diamondhands’ post, mining on Bitclout has been conducted with CPU up until now. Now, @cloutreactor, an independent project led by @korbin, has been adopted by the Bitclout core team as an official way to mine $bitclout with GPU, too. The @cloutreactor code, which is also public on Github, allows anyone and everyone in the Bitclout community to contribute GPU to a mining ‘pool’ and to earn $bitclout in the process (hell yeah).
As we saw with the new sidebar that went up on Friday that leverages @bitcloutsignal and @bithunt (and for which @diamdondhands tipped his cap to @charliehilton, noting his design work served as an inspiration), the Bitclout core team appears to be increasingly open to working with third-party community members to expand the Bitclout project. @korbin’s work on @cloutreactor meanwhile means that truly anyone with basic computer-know how and the right systems can contribute to building the Bitclout blockchain 🧱🏗️.
How the economics will play out for new miners is more of an open question. @tijn provided us with the following rough breakdown of the rewards miners will be able to reap. Importantly, as with other cryptocurrencies, mining rewards will also decrease over time:
For the next ~9 months or so, each block mined will earn 1 $bitclout + fees
Then, there will be a ‘halving’ of sorts as we see with other cryptocurrencies
For the next 2 years after that, rewards will reduce to 0.5 $bitclout + fees per block
🔁
We’re obviously quite early stages less than 24 hours in, but @jamesharbal shared some early stats on his mining efforts. He shared with @nvo that currently his $bitclout mining operation is 5x more lucrative than ETH mining:
What’s also important to keep an eye on here as part of the mining discussion is the impact it will have on $Bitclout supply. After the ‘deflation 💣’ goes off (read about it here) and you can’t buy Bitclout on Bitclout.com anymore, miners will be the only ones introducing new $Bitclout into circulation. As mining rewards slow over time, so too will the amount of new $Bitclout entering the ‘money supply.’
Remember, the total supply of $Bitclout is also capped. From @diamondhands’ Bitclout guide: “10 to 19 million BitClout [will be] minted in the long run (less than Bitcoin’s max supply of 21 million)” (source here)
As Bitclout matures, we’ll asymptotically approach this cap, with less and less new $Bitclout entering circulation over time. Once we hit the cap, no more $Bitclout will be mined or minted (unless plans for the currency fundamentally change).
As the amount of new $Bitclout entering circulation falls, and if demand for $Bitclout remains strong, we could see things get quite bullish for the price of $Bitclout 🐂🐂🐂. While it seems relatively easy to get your hands on $Bitclout right now, it may get harder and harder as new coin supply dwindles and thousands or millions of new users join, all of whom will be trying to get their hands on an increasingly fixed supply of $Bitclout.
In summary? As was true in California in 1849, the gold rush in mining won’t last forever. But the $bitclout mined now may very well be worth it’s weight in code a few years down the line.
Godspeed miners, ⚒️⚒️⚒️, and remember us when you become the 🐳s of tomorrow.
#3 Decentralized Media vs. Boomer Media: @HighKey invades USA Today
Put a shirt on, @HighKey boys. We kid, @ASG wishes he still looked like y’all. What are we referencing? The 🔥 opening photo of a new USA TODAY article on Bitclout published earlier today that was contributed to the publication by the Lintz brothers, who run @HighKey.
It’s now been a few weeks since Business Insider and Ad Week ran pieces covering Bitclout.com. And while we like to sh*t on boomer media in these pages a bit, this article on USA TODAY is different. Rather than a piece written by folks at USA TODAY themselves, it looks like the boys at @highkey largely penned this piece themselves; the piece includes a disclaimer that notes “Members of the editorial and news staff of the USA TODAY Network were not involved in the creation of this content.”
As such, the article is more a powerful piece of evangelism for Bitclout, less a critical outsider’s perspective. Ideally, this will bring more new users into the fold and get folks excited about the potential of Bitclout, especially for the brands and creators who already have a strong social following that @Highkey’s business is built around. It’s an impressive feat that @highkey pulled this off, and speaks to the impact that power-users can have at this early stage of user adoption. What have you done to onboard new users today?
We encourage you all go read the piece for yourselves (read here). If you’re looking for something snackable here’s the money shot passage we found most impactful from the article:
HighKey believes the appeal of BitClout comes from the power it places back into influencers’ hands. “At any point in time, [a social media platform] has the full right to censor, shadowban, or fully disable your account,” they say. “This is where the decentralized component of BitClout comes into play. Every creator on the platform has ownership of their own ‘creator coin,’ and any money directly invested into themselves is not only retained but helps build their brand and attract other investors.”
#4 General Absurdity: @Doodles Derby 🏇
This past weekend we witnessed the first inaugural running of the @Doodles Derby, a 72 hour contest that was designed to see how 11 different contestants could best involve and maximize engagement with the Bitclout community. The name of the game? Drum up as much engagement as possible, whether by designing memes, pumping your coin, or even completing a @beerselfie challenge.
Over the course of the 72 hours, the racers and @doodles alike drummed up thousands of engagements. Some of the more creative and… interesting marketing tactics included @clayoglesby’s use of an 🥚, @valeriac’s stunning travel pictures, and @futurepolitician utilizing his sheer force of will in pumping out endless content. Ultimately, @cloutmafia, was able to demonstrate why they were the betting favorite at the start of the running; their entirely organic marketing machine netted them first place.
Congratulations to all the racers who participated, and of course to the @cloutmafia. We were blown away watching the community rally around this fun concept. Special thanks of course to Bitclout’s #1 dog for putting on the event! The community clearly loved it:
@doodles has shared that this won’t be the last derby that creators can get involved in. Get your fancy hats and mint juleps ready for the next one! Also… pst… @doodles say to brush up on those beer pong skills for another derby coming soon… 👀
#5 BitsTODAY Podcast: Hey @charliehilton, “Yew sound like you’re from London!”
In case you missed our Clubhouse on Sunday night, whether it be from timezone troubles or just poor planning on your end — we got you boo boo. You can access all of our previous episodes on Spotify. Most recently featured is a guest appearance by @charliehilton, The “BitClout Design Gawd” and all around solid dude. Listen to it here.
How’d we do today, clouters? If you’re half-way out the door to find NVIDIA graphics cards at your local Best Buy to start mining, let us save you some time — you probs won’t find them there. There’s lots of different, creative ways beyond mining to grow both your clout and Bitclout however, as evidence by the @highkey team and @doodles. Or you know, contribute your best story pitches to @nvo and @BitsTODAY. Our doors (and discord) are open.
Buenas noches,
@BitsTODAY
… oh yeah. One more thing… @neurally 👀