Musk Hints at Crypto Payments on Twitter
- During a Twitter virtual all hands on deck meeting, billionaire Elon Musk said “it would make sense to integrate payments into Twitter”, including crypto.
- The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX also noted that his goal for Twitter was to “maximize the usefulness of the service”, and that enabling convenient payments was one way to do it.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk in California City, California, USA on 14 December 2020. Shutterstock
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is considering to integrate payments into Twitter more broadly, including cryptocurrencies, as it would make the platform “more useful”, Vox reported on 16 June.
The news outlet published a leaked transcript of Musk speaking at a Twitter virtual all-hands on deck meeting, in which the billionaire said his goal was to focus on maximizing the usefulness of the platform. One way, he said, was to enable users to make convenient payments through Twitter, and that cryptocurrency payments is one feature that could make that possible. Musk said that in order to grow, Twitter needs to focus on three key areas:
“News, entertainment, and payments, I think, are like three critical areas. But really, it’s just about thinking about how to make this, how to make using Twitter so compelling that you can’t live without it and that everyone wants to use it.”
Twitter already started experimenting with cryptocurrency back in 2021, when it incorporated Bitcoin (BTC) tipping on its platform through a partnership with Strike, a payment application built on the Bitcoin Lightning Network. Back in April, Twitter also became the first company to try out Stripe’s new program, which enabled payments in USDC via Polygon.
The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX entered into an agreement with Twitter earlier this year to purchase the company for $44 billion. And while we still do not know what Musk’s intentions are — he had previously argued that he had the right to pull out of the deal — the purchase seems to be on track, as suggested by his presence during the Twitter meeting.
Yesterday, a U.S. citizen filed a $258 billion lawsuit — which the crypto community has ridiculed — against Musk, claiming the billionaire had “engaged in a crypto pyramid scheme” involving Dogecoin (DOGE). Plaintiff Keith Johnson has alleged that Musk and his corporations had enriched themselves by $86 billion through DOGE between May 2021 and June 2022.
- Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has regained his T-Mobile account, which on Saturday was compromised by hackers and used to take over his X account.
- On 9 September, hackers used a SIM-swap attack to take over Buterin’s X account, and siphon close to $700,000 in crypto by promoting a fake NFT giveaway.
Ethereum co-founder and Vitalik Buterin speaks during TechCrunch Disrupt. 18 September, 2017, San Francisco, California.Steve Jennings/Getty Images for TechCrunch
- Although it was launched in beta on 10 August, the platform has already entered the list of top three fee generating crypto projects by earning $1.42 million in 24 hours.
- Friend.tech is a social app integrated with X (formerly Twitter) that allows users to sell and buy tokenized shares of their social network, gaining access to exclusive content and private chat rooms.
- During an interview with FT, CEO Brian Armstrong said that before the lawsuit a SEC staff member had said that all crypto except BTC was security, and should be delisted.
- When asked how he came to that conclusion, the SEC staff member reportedly said “we’re not going to explain it to you, you need to delist every asset other that Bitcoin”.