Inside twocents, The New Social Network Where Your – Business News
Your internet value is your community.
That’s the premise behind twocents, a fledgling social media platform that replaces conventional usernames with simply that one quantity.
After raising a $3 million pre-seed spherical from enterprise corporations Dragonfly and Starting Line in late June, the platform is gearing up for a public launch later this yr.
Twocents is a new social media platform that replaces conventional identities with verified internet value, creating a pseudo-anonymous community the place customers join, post, and work together in opposition to the backdrop of financial actuality. The highest verified internet value on the platform is $16 million, however there are unverified customers with even larger worths. Andi Duro / Two Cents
“We got rid of all the formalities,” founder and CEO Andi Duro, 26, advised NYNext. “It’s about radical transparency.”
Twocents verifies customers’ internet value by linking bank accounts, brokerage portfolios and crypto wallets by way of Plaid — a fintech service utilized by apps similar to Venmo and Robinhood. That cumulative determine, fluctuating because the consumer’s accounts do, turns into their sole figuring out characteristic on the platform.
So far, about 1,400 customers have been onboarded by way of a personal beta, bringing with them more than $150 million in related belongings. The highest verified internet value on the platform sits at $16 million.
Unlike conventional social media, internet value is the filter, not the flex. And, not like financial-focused platforms similar to Public.com and StockTwits, twocents is inherently pseudo-anonymous.
Despite its financial framing although, Duro has noticed that the content material posted to twocents appears more like X (previously often called Twitter) than what’s historically discovered on financial boards. Aside from investing, topics vary from politics to relationship to profession advice — with customers’ internet value hovering beside every post, including weight — and context — to each opinion.
Polls on twocents don’t simply show how people vote — they reveal the average internet value behind every response, including a new layer of insight to each dialog subject.
Andi Duro / Two Cents
Even polls include added depth: customers not solely see which option wins, but in addition the average internet value of voters in every group.
Structurally, the platform resembles Reddit; posts are organized by subject, and customers can observe or unfollow to curate their feed. But, twocents’ closest cousin, Duro argues, is the Bloomberg Terminal, which prices round $24,000 per yr.
Andi Duro, the 26-year-old founder and CEO of twocents, got here up with the concept after observing how wealth formed unstated dynamics in tech circles. He then set out to construct a platform the place financial actuality was inconceivable to faux. Andi Duro / Two Cents
“You know the person on the other side can afford at least that,” he stated. “And that changes your perception.”
While the platform acknowledges solely bank, brokerage, and crypto holdings in the meanwhile, twocents plans to broaden into real estate, startup equity and different asset courses, similar to luxurious automobiles, sooner or later.
“This all depends on verifiable but anonymized financial information, which is a natural fit for crypto,” Tom Schmidt, the companion at Dragonfly who led the investment, advised NYNext. “We’re excited to bring [our] technical expertise to support the next generation of social platforms.”
Funding may even be used to assist integrations for debt visibility, together with mortgages, scholar loans, and credit card balances — permitting customers to check not simply wealth, however financial realities.
Wealth is verified by way of Plaid, a fintech service that hyperlinks customers’ bank, brokerage, and crypto accounts to calculate a real-time internet value. Andi Duro / Two Cents
Duro sees stay occasions — dinners for customers with $50,000 in credit card debt, or those that’ve held Apple stock for a decade — as a natural extension of the platform.
“A lot of shame absolves when you know everyone in the room is in the same position,” he stated.
For all its concentrate on transparency, twocents collects no personal information, e mail addresses or cellphone numbers. Account credentials are created domestically on system and synced by way of iCloud.
Accounts created during beta testing had been saved domestically by way of iCloud, and information pulled by way of Plaid was “read-only” and restricted to account balances.
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Twocents will roll out throughout iOS, Android, and the web earlier than the tip of the yr, Duro estimates, with options like verified financial posting — suppose quote-tweeting your own bank exercise — and, finally, a system that rewards not simply wealth, however foresight.
“We want to connect wealthy people to smart people,” Duro stated. “What does the world look like with a social network that enables that?”
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