Buzzy new social media platform replaces usernames with net worth
That's the premise behind twocents, a fledgling social media platform that replaces traditional usernames with just that one number.
After raising a $3 million pre-seed round from venture firms Dragonfly and Starting Line in late June, the platform is gearing up for a public launch later this year.
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4 Twocents is a new social media platform that replaces traditional identities with verified net worth, creating a pseudo-anonymous network where users connect, post, and interact against the backdrop of financial reality. The highest verified net worth on the platform is $16 million, but there are unverified users with even higher worths.
Andi Duro / Two Cents
'We got rid of all the formalities,' founder and CEO Andi Duro, 26, told NYNext. 'It's about radical transparency.'
Twocents verifies users' net worth by linking bank accounts, brokerage portfolios and crypto wallets through Plaid — a fintech service used by apps such as Venmo and Robinhood. That cumulative figure, fluctuating as the user's accounts do, becomes their sole identifying feature on the platform.
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So far, about 1,400 users have been onboarded through a private beta, bringing with them more than $150 million in connected assets. The highest verified net worth on the platform sits at $16 million.
Unlike traditional social media, net worth is the filter, not the flex. And, unlike financial-focused platforms such as Public.com and StockTwits, twocents is inherently pseudo-anonymous.
Despite its financial framing though, Duro has observed that the content posted to twocents looks more like X (formerly known as Twitter) than what's traditionally found on financial forums. Aside from investing, topics range from politics to dating to career advice — with users' net worth hovering beside each post, adding weight — and context — to every opinion.
4 Polls on twocents don't just show how people vote — they reveal the average net worth behind each response, adding a new layer of insight to every conversation topic.
Andi Duro / Two Cents
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Even polls come with added depth: users not only see which option wins, but also the average net worth of voters in each group.
Structurally, the platform resembles Reddit; posts are organized by topic, and users can follow or unfollow to curate their feed. But, twocents' closest cousin, Duro argues, is the Bloomberg Terminal, which costs around $24,000 per year.
4 Andi Duro, the 26-year-old founder and CEO of twocents, came up with the idea after observing how wealth shaped unspoken dynamics in tech circles. He then set out to build a platform where financial reality was impossible to fake.
Andi Duro / Two Cents
'You know the person on the other side can afford at least that,' he said. 'And that changes your perception.'
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While the platform recognizes only bank, brokerage, and crypto holdings at the moment, twocents plans to expand into real estate, startup equity and other asset classes, such as luxury vehicles, in the future.
'This all depends on verifiable but anonymized financial information, which is a natural fit for crypto,' Tom Schmidt, the partner at Dragonfly who led the investment, told NYNext. 'We're excited to bring [our] technical expertise to support the next generation of social platforms.'
Funding will also be used to support integrations for debt visibility, including mortgages, student loans, and credit card balances — allowing users to compare not just wealth, but financial realities.
4 Wealth is verified through Plaid, a fintech service that links users' bank, brokerage, and crypto accounts to calculate a real-time net worth.
Andi Duro / Two Cents
Duro sees live events — dinners for users with $50,000 in credit card debt, or those who'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 said.
For all its focus on transparency, twocents collects no personal data, email addresses or phone numbers. Account credentials are created locally on device and synced via iCloud.
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Accounts created during beta testing were stored locally via iCloud, and data pulled through Plaid was 'read-only' and limited to account balances.
This story is part of NYNext, an indispensable insider insight into the innovations, moonshots and political chess moves that matter most to NYC's power players (and those who aspire to be).
Twocents will roll out across iOS, Android, and the web before the end of the year, Duro estimates, with features like verified financial posting — think quote-tweeting your own bank activity — and, eventually, a system that rewards not just wealth, but foresight.
'We want to connect wealthy people to smart people,' Duro said. 'What does the world look like with a social network that enables that?'
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