Elon Musk recently disclosed his plans to add payments feature to the X app (formerly Twitter) by mid-2024. The multi-billionaire tech mogul has been working towards his goal of transforming X into an ‘everything app’ — prior to Musk’s takeover of the platform, Twitter was characterised as a microblogging platform. Interestingly, Musk chose to leave out the mention of cryptocurrencies while speaking about his digital payments feature plan for X. Crypto payments remain a much-requested feature on X, especially among the platform’s avid cryptocurrency enthusiasts.
Musk told ARK Invest’s Cathie Wood in an interview on Thursday that several licence approvals are awaited before X could also function as a money transmitter. This means that users might have to wait until mid-2024 before the payments feature is finally rolled out on the platform, according to Musk. While Musk admitted that X was a bit late in sending all these required applications, he did not reveal any plans to integrate crypto with X’s upcoming payment feature. On the contrary, Musk recently revealed that he spends “hardly any” time mulling over digital assets while responding to a question generated by his own GenAI initiative called Grok.
This apparent cold shoulder that the tech mogul is giving the crypto sector has sparked discussions among users on the social media platform.
Someone asked me today: “What is one company that you admire, and what would you change about it?”
Without thinking I said, “Elon Musk’s Twitter -X platform, I would equip it with crypto payment to enable the largest scale human collaboration in Decentralized Autonomous…
— Misa Zhang 梅莎 (@TheActualMisa) December 21, 2023
As of August this year, X had acquired a currency transmitter licence in Rhode Island, Michigan, Missouri, and New Hampshire.
It is notable that while Musk remains tight-lipped around cryptocurrencies, his EV company Tesla still holds BTC worth $148 million (roughly Rs. 1,232 crore). The company also permits the purchase of select Tesla merchandise via Dogecoin. In 2022, it was reported that Musk’s tunnel construction company called The Boring Company was letting customers pay in DOGE for rides on the Las Vegas transit system.
It was reported in April that Musk had pitched his favourite cryptocurrency, Dogecoin, as a payment option for users seeking to avail Twitter Blue services. That, however, did not happen as the months unfolded. For now, it remains unclear whether X plans to support crypto transactions as part of the upcoming payments feature.