After Elon Musk changed Twitter’s official name to X Holdings Corp in April, he decided that finally, the time had come to go all in and change the app’s name itself. In a productive weekend, Musk who had bought Twitter for $44bn in October 2022, announced that the X logo would go ahead.
“And soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds.” Musk said.
Twitter’s advertisement money has been declining since Musk took over and he has since voiced plans for a complete revamp of the popular social media site into an everything app, including payments.
Twitter CEO, Linda Yaccarino confirmed the re-branding, stating “X will be the platform that can deliver, well … everything [a] global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities”.
Musk explained the move, saying that Twitter did not have the right ethos and therefore a reboot of the whole platform was needed.
Musk stated in an interview that X could eventually include “half of the global financial system” by providing banking, payment, and other financial services. The potential of X has been compared to WeChat and other apps in China. Since buying Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022, Musk has pushed for the network to provide financial services.
This has led to some speculations as to how Musk and Yaccarino plan to accomplish financial services inclusion. As the name “X” suggests a connection to XRP or XLM, some have raised hopes that either one or perhaps both of these cryptocurrencies may be integrated into the platform.
XRP, which won clarity in a landmark decision by Judge Torres less than two weeks ago, is now the only cryptocurrency to have regulatory clarity. However, others believe that it will be Dogecoin that will be used as payment on X.
Incidentally, it was only last April that Musk temporarily changed the then-Twitter logo and replaced it with the Dogecoin symbol, which at that time caused the meme-coin to rise by 20%.
Well-known Real-Vision CEO and Investor Raoul Pal said “Two things I’ve said when Elon bought “X”: Elon bought it for the AI, and the free speech angle is to give it an unbiased model. He needs the AI to train the Optimus robot. He will use crypto to be able to make global payments for creators etc. My guess is he uses Doge.”
Elon Musk has long been known for his affection for what he calls the “people’s crypto” and has caused price surges of Dogecoin in the past. While Dogecoin has rallied by 19% since the re-branding of Twitter into X, it remains to be seen how the story unfolds and whether X will incorporate Dogecoin or any other cryptocurrency into its new payment rails.
