Riding on the Cryptocurrency and NFT Wave: Twitter Needs to “Show Me the Money”

New Twitter CEO Elon Musk had been aggressively cutting costs since he acquired the company in October 2022. Much of this had been accomplished by retrenching huge numbers of staff. Meanwhile, Musk’s moves to restore banned accounts had eliminated a host of key advertisers, causing its main source of revenue – advertising earnings – to plummet as they suspended their advertising activities on the platform.

Twitter had tried various ways and means to augment its revenue, and had begun backing all things related to cryptocurrencies. First, it allowed cryptocurrency exchanges and wallets to run advertisements. It subsequently facilitated discussions about cryptocurrencies on its platform and allowed users to tip content creators with Ether. The company further allowed users of its Twitter Blue service to connect their Twitter accounts to their cryptocurrency wallets where their non-fungible token (NFT) holdings were held. Twitter then went on to facilitate the buying and selling of NFTs through tweets.

It was clear that Twitter had to open up new steady revenue streams. Were cryptocurrencies and NFTs the answer? Only time would tell.

This case is intended for use in digital business courses. The case discussion should enable the students to evaluate the influence social media has in promoting NFTs, determine how social networks impact the sales of NFTs, assess whether NFTs still need the support of social media, judge the merits and demerits of decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs) and social media for the promotion of NFTs, and ascertain the difficulties encountered when social media are deployed to promote NFTs.

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