Is Elon Musk Integrating Crypto Into Twitter?

Twitter To Incorporate Payments

Musk’s move to incorporate payments into Twitter is just one part of his grand idea to make Twitter an “everything app” called X. The Twitter, SpaceX, and Tesla head first outlined this vision in November, not long after acquiring the platform.

In a Twitter Spaces livestream to pacify uneasy advertisers, Musk described, among other proposals, how users would have their bank accounts and debit cards linked to the site. “The next step would be to offer an extremely compelling money market account to get extremely high yield on your balance,” he enthused.

As he had informed Twitter employees in June, the (sometimes) world’s richest man envisions Twitter as a one-stop shop app akin to WeChat – an ultra-popular China-based company used by hundreds of millions of people as a social media, news, ride-hailing, food delivery, and payments app all at once.

Now, Twitter is hitting the ground running with what seemed like Musk’s off-the-cuff ideas. At least with payments.

The Financial Times writes that staff is already creating a vault to store and protect user data. They are also filing for state licenses, after which the company will seek to go international.

In early November, Twitter filed paperwork with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) as the first step to offering payment services.

What About Crypto?

While all’s fine and dandy with this development, crypto enthusiasts want to see their favorite form of currency taking a big role at Twitter.

The crypto community was among the most elated when it became apparent that the Tesla boss would be purchasing the social media site. “You have the world’s richest man, in some way, legitimizing some of our concepts and ideas, and it will be a fantastic onboarding platform,” host of the Crypto 101 podcast Bryce Paul raved to the New York Times.

Crypto exchange Binance contributed $500 million to Musk’s Twitter buyout. Its CEO Changpeng Zhao, a.k.a CZ, told CNBC the aim was to “make sure that crypto has a seat at the table when it comes to free speech.”

In short, many have high hopes for crypto payments on Twitter. And going by Musk’s well-known enthusiasm for the technology and recent development, it’s not far-fetched to believe that they will get their wish.

But that doesn’t mean it will be easy.

US regulators’ are usually keen to stamp out anything they perceive as shady activity in crypto operations. Twitter would have to jump through many regulatory hoops to integrate cryptocurrencies, and even after doing so, would constantly live under the microscope of the SEC, FINCEN, the Department of Justice Department and other oversight agencies.

As such, while crypto fans want to see Twitter crypto integration, it’s helpful to recognize that it might not be as plain sailing.

But if Twitter crypto payments became a thing, that would be a significant push in the digital assets’ march to widespread recognition. The community welcomes Musk’s signaled support for the move.

Twitter’s Long Relationship with Crypto

With that said, even if Twitter is now under new guard, it feels remiss not to mention the social media company’s long-standing amiable nature towards crypto. The platform’s co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey — himself an avowed Bitcoin backer — used the platform to spotlight the pioneer cryptocurrency.

One of his such moves was to enable a Bitcoin emoji on the social media site. All a user needs to do is to type #bitcoin or #btc, and the Bitcoin symbol will appear next to it.

This may seem insignificant, but it’s massive. For instance, it created such excitement that user engagement for “Bitcoin” went off the charts at the time.

The Twitter Bitcoin emoji move may have been spurred by Bitcoin podcaster Anthony “Pomp” Pompliano, who tweeted in 2019: “Twitter needs a Bitcoin emoji” and urged followers to retweet the message. He must have realized that emojis were more than a light-hearted way to chat on, say, WhatsApp.

Other pro-crypto moves by Twitter have been:

• The ability to receive tips in BTC or ETH
• The ability to look up Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) prices by simply entering their names or tickers on Twitter’s search bar and hitting search (Musk retweeted the announcement)
• The ability for NFT owners to showcase their image on Twitter profiles with a verification (read anti-right click) mechanism to boot. A recent update for this function is the NFT Tweet Tiles

Going by Musk’s affinity for crypto, it’s safe to think that Twitter will continue vouching for the revolutionary financial tech with him at the helm.

Closing Thoughts: A Matter of When

The latest news out of Twitter on crypto integration is not exactly what the cryptoverse wanted to hear, but it’s better than nothing.

With the current less-than-friendly crypto oversight environment, it would take a ton of work before crypto payments launched on Twitter. But if it’s Elon Musk at the wheel of this ship, crypto believers can rest assured it’s a question of when, and not if, that’s going to happen. Here’s to hoping it’s not too far off the horizon.