Crypto Biz: The Winklevoss Criticizes Silbert, Twitter’s Double-Edged Sword, and Others

Twitter’s plans to launch a payments platform took a major step forward this week as its subsidiary, Twitter Payments, received its first money transmitter licenses in the United States of America in Michigan, New Hampshire and Missouri.

The company – reportedly building a solution with crypto in mind – is looking to provide transfer services in all 50 US states, with further approvals still pending and no clear timeline.

Like every business, Twitter is also looking for new sources of revenue supported by its huge user base. At a Twitter Spaces event in 2022, Musk said he envisions allowing bank accounts to be linked to social media profiles, including debit cards and money transfers. The goal appears to be similar to that of the now-defunct Diem — the failed global payments project of Facebook’s parent company Meta.

Twitter relies heavily on its crypto-tech community for better results than Meta’s project, but Musk also has differences with Crypto Twitter. This week, the platform limited its content access, citing “excessive levels of data scraping and system manipulation”. The decision was a blow to the crypto ecosystem, which relies heavily on Twitter to share information and gain new audiences.

“I set “view limit” because we are all Twitter addicts and we need to go out,” Said Musk on stage. The move could be a double-edged sword for Twitter’s payment plans.

This week’s crypto biz also explores Gemini’s battle with the Digital Currency Group (DCG) over user funds, new banking tools for the digital yuan, and OpenAI’s efforts to prevent users from jumping paywalls.

Winklevoss criticizes DCG’s Silbert – even the SBF was not ‘capable of such illusions’

In an open letter published on July 4, Cameron Winklevoss criticized Digital Currency Group CEO Barry Silbert for allegedly playing the victim card when Gemini’s 232,000 Earn customers are owed $1.2 billion. DCG’s genesis was the lender behind Gemini’s Earn program, which promised depositors returns as high as 8%. It suspended withdrawals in November 2022 following the collapse of FTX. “I am writing to inform you that your games are over,” Winklevoss said, explaining that professional fees have now exceeded $100 million at the expense of Credits and Earn users. The Winklevoss gives Silbert an ultimatum: accept his firm’s “best and final offer” or face lawsuit. The proposal includes a $1.47 billion settlement, with the first payment due this month and the final payment five years from now. Later, on July 7, Gemini filed a lawsuit against DCG.

Earn Update: An Open Letter @barrysilbert pic.twitter.com/ErsYpcEjQD

— Cameron Winklevoss (@Cameron) 4 July 2023

Crypto-friendly DBS Bank launches digital yuan transaction tool

DBS Bank China has officially announced the launch of a digital yuan merchant solution, allowing mainland businesses to receive payments in the central bank digital currency (CBDC). DBS told Cointelegraph that the new service will allow its customers in mainland China to receive or collect digital yuan and have it automatically deposited into their yuan bank deposit accounts. By the end of 2022, there will be 13.6 billion digital yuan in circulation, or about $2 billion. CBDCs are currently accepted in 26 cities and 17 provinces in China, with adoption expected to grow as more provinces join the program.

Musk imposes ‘rate cap’ on Twitter, citing excessive ‘system manipulation’

Social media platform Twitter is temporarily limiting the number of posts users are allowed to read per day after noticing “excessive levels of data scraping and system manipulation,” according to executive chairman Musk. The new rules temporarily limit verified accounts to 10,000 posts per day, while unverified and newly unverified accounts are limited to 1,000 and 500 posts per day, respectively. The decision has been largely criticized by the crypto community, which relies heavily on Twitter for information communication and sharing. The new rate limit has already affected the indexing and display of Tweets on Google’s search engine, causing more than 50% of Twitter URLs to disappear from the search index. Lower tweet visibility on Google will also reduce the amount of crypto-related content coming from Twitter.

Now up to 10k, 1k and 0.5k

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) 1 July 2023

OpenAI blocked ChatGPT’s Bing feature because users were jumping the paywall

ChatGPT Browse, a Bing-based search engine feature, has been temporarily disabled by OpenAI because of a flaw that could allow users to bypass paywall content. OpenAI may have taken action on the issue in response to the Reddit post. In late June, a member of the r/ChatGPT subreddit posted a screenshot of a browse session where he asked the chatbot to “text print” a link to a paywall article from The Atlantic. In response, ChatGPT made the full article available without a paywall. The browser is currently in beta and is available to customers of the ChatGPT Plus service.

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