Your internet price is your community.
That’s the premise behind twocents, a fledgling social media platform that replaces conventional usernames with simply that one quantity.
After elevating a $3 million pre-seed spherical from enterprise corporations Dragonfly and Beginning Line in late June, the platform is gearing up for a public launch later this yr.
“We removed all of the formalities,” founder and CEO Andi Duro, 26, instructed NYNext. “It’s about radical transparency.”
Twocents verifies customers’ internet price by linking financial institution accounts, brokerage portfolios and crypto wallets via Plaid — a fintech service utilized by apps comparable to Venmo and Robinhood. That cumulative determine, fluctuating because the consumer’s accounts do, turns into their sole figuring out characteristic on the platform.
Thus far, about 1,400 customers have been onboarded via a non-public beta, bringing with them greater than $150 million in related property. The best verified internet price on the platform sits at $16 million.
Not like conventional social media, internet price is the filter, not the flex. And, in contrast to financial-focused platforms comparable to Public.com and StockTwits, twocents is inherently pseudo-anonymous.
Regardless of its monetary framing although, Duro has noticed that the content material posted to twocents appears extra like X (previously often called Twitter) than what’s historically discovered on monetary boards. Other than investing, subjects vary from politics to relationship to profession recommendation — with customers’ internet price hovering beside every submit, including weight — and context — to each opinion.
Andi Duro / Two Cents
Even polls include added depth: customers not solely see which possibility wins, but additionally the common internet price of voters in every group.
Structurally, the platform resembles Reddit; posts are organized by matter, and customers can observe or unfollow to curate their feed. However, twocents’ closest cousin, Duro argues, is the Bloomberg Terminal, which prices round $24,000 per yr.
“You understand the particular person on the opposite aspect can afford at the least that,” he mentioned. “And that adjustments your notion.”
Whereas the platform acknowledges solely financial institution, brokerage, and crypto holdings in the meanwhile, twocents plans to broaden into actual property, startup fairness and different asset courses, comparable to luxurious autos, sooner or later.
“This all depends upon verifiable however anonymized monetary info, which is a pure match for crypto,” Tom Schmidt, the associate at Dragonfly who led the funding, instructed NYNext. “We’re excited to deliver [our] technical experience to assist the subsequent era of social platforms.”
Funding may also be used to assist integrations for debt visibility, together with mortgages, pupil loans, and bank card balances — permitting customers to check not simply wealth, however monetary realities.
Duro sees stay occasions — dinners for customers with $50,000 in bank card debt, or those that’ve held Apple inventory for a decade — as a pure extension of the platform.
“A number of disgrace absolves when everybody within the room is in the identical place,” he mentioned.
For all its deal with transparency, twocents collects no private information, e mail addresses or telephone numbers. Account credentials are created regionally on system and synced by way of iCloud.
Accounts created throughout beta testing have been saved regionally by way of iCloud, and information pulled via Plaid was “read-only” and restricted to account balances.
This story is a part of NYNext, an indispensable insider perception into the improvements, moonshots and political chess strikes that matter most to NYC’s energy gamers (and those that aspire to be).
Twocents will roll out throughout iOS, Android, and the net earlier than the tip of the yr, Duro estimates, with options like verified monetary posting — assume quote-tweeting your individual financial institution exercise — and, finally, a system that rewards not simply wealth, however foresight.
“We wish to join rich individuals to good individuals,” Duro mentioned. “What does the world appear like with a social community that allows that?”
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