<\/p>\n
Friend.tech, a decentralized social media platform on which users can buy and sell \u201cshares\u201d of personal accounts on X, formerly Twitter, experienced a surge in interest over the weekend.<\/p>\n
The platform raked in more than $1 million in fees over a 24-hour period \u2014\u00a0and attorneys focused on crypto believe it\u2019s safe to say the US Securities and Exchange Commission is watching.<\/p>\n
Friend.tech transactions come with two 5% fees. One goes to Friend.tech\u2019s treasury and one goes to the account holder for whom the shares are being traded. Users can also, in theory, turn a profit by investing in accounts whose share value increases.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The model appears similar to the stock market, securities experts say. Just as public company shareholders can receive dividends, influencers can opt to share fees with buyers \u2014 a perk many are already offering<\/a> to boost trading volume and share prices.\u00a0<\/p>\n Shareholders are granted permission to privately message accounts in which they have a stake. This gives the app a potential utility that could come in handy if securities regulators take interest, according to Mark Hiraide, a partner at Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp.\u00a0<\/p>\n But, the expectation of profit cannot be ignored, Hiraide told Blockworks.<\/p>\n \u201cClearly there\u2019s some utility there, but the fact that they call these \u2018shares\u2019 is an indication that these are not just admission tickets,\u201d Hiraide said. \u201cWhat they are selling essentially is the prospect of capital appreciation in the shares; as more people join the platform, as more people buy shares to access popular personalities, the value of the shares will increase.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Read more:<\/strong> Decentralized social media app Friend.tech is surging<\/a><\/p>\n Whether or not the shares ever trade on a platform separate from Friend.tech will also be something to watch, Hiraide said, as listing on third-party exchanges would make it harder to distinguish the assets from traditional securities.\u00a0<\/p>\n Users may not be innocent bystanders, either, as Jesse Hynes \u2014\u00a0attorney and founder of Seedstarter \u2014\u00a0said in response to whether influencers could be held liable for share price fluctuations.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHonestly it\u2019s a legitimate possibility,\u201d he wrote<\/a> on X. \u201cEven though a person who sets up an account is not an \u2018issuer\u2019 per se, if this is unregistered security offerings (like I suspect) people who willingly signed up to allow others to purchase shares may get caught up.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The application does not currently have a privacy policy. Users are directed to \u201ccheck out\u201d the policy on the platform\u2019s website, but are then told that it will be \u201ccoming soon.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n At sign-up, users allow Friend.tech to view all posts and accounts that the user can see, including protected accounts. Users also grant permission for Friend.tech to post posts and reposts from the users\u2019 account. At this time, users can disable these permissions after registration.<\/p>\n The apparent popularity of Friend.tech and the attention it has drawn alone could be enough to make the SEC step in, Hiraide said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI think the same thing is true with the case against Ripple,\u201d he said. \u201cEven though the SEC<\/a> knew that Ripple had a lot of resources and was going to be able to lawyer up, there was so much publicity surrounding Ripple<\/a> that the SEC had no choice but to pursue it.\u201d<\/p>\n Get the day\u2019s top crypto news and insights delivered to your email every evening.\u00a0Subscribe to Blockworks\u2019 free newsletter<\/a>\u00a0now.<\/strong><\/p>\n Want alpha sent directly to your inbox? Get degen trade ideas, governance updates, token performance, can\u2019t-miss tweets and more from\u00a0Blockworks Research\u2019s Daily Debrief<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n Can\u2019t wait? Get our news the fastest way possible.\u00a0Join us on Telegram<\/a>\u00a0and follow us on\u00a0Google News<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Friend.tech, a decentralized social media platform on which users can buy and sell \u201cshares\u201d of personal accounts on X, formerly Twitter, experienced a surge in interest over the weekend. The platform raked in more than $1 million in fees over a 24-hour period \u2014\u00a0and attorneys focused on crypto believe it\u2019s safe to say the US […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140364,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[230,225,221,227,226,228,229,60,223,224,222],"class_list":["post-140363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cryptocurrency","tag-brave","tag-coinbase","tag-crypto","tag-decentralised","tag-decentralized","tag-decentralized-exchange","tag-erc-20","tag-featured","tag-meme-coin","tag-robinhood","tag-solana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140363"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":147369,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140363\/revisions\/147369"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n