As a long-term and dedicated user of facebook and twitter since the 2000s, it is weird to find that, today, they are no longer useful tools. The feeds are now stacked with Mark Zuckerberg updates, Musk propaganda and worse. The only tool that’s still useful is LinkedIn, although there are issues there too.
So it struck me as interesting this week that X is launching a payments system with Visa. The most interesting thing to start with is that I expected X to launch a payments system with Dogecoin. That’s still going to happen one day I reckon but, for now, Visa will do.
What’s the deal?
CNBC explains it well, and the basics seem to be that Visa will enable X users to move funds between traditional bank accounts and their digital wallet to make instant peer-to-peer payments, like with Zelle or Venmo. The X Wallet is here … well, actually they call it the X Money Account, which implies more than just payments in the future.
In fact, as CEO of X Linda Yaccarino points out in her X update, this will be the “first of many big announcements about X Money this year”.
Another milestone for the Everything App: @Visa is our first partner for the @XMoney Account, which will debut later this year.
Allows for secure + instant funding to your X Wallet via Visa Direct
Connects to your debit card allowing P2P payments
Option to instantly…
— Linda Yaccarino (@lindayaX) January 28, 2025
What else is planned?
Well, obvs there will be more partners, not just Visa. I’m sure X is talking to MasterCard, American Express and more.
Equally obvs is that they will be investigating how to make crypto open to all. After all, Donald is the Crypto-President and Musk his First Buddy.
But it wouldn’t surprise me if X went full force into finance and copied the likes of eToro, Nutmeg and more to offer investment, trading and wealth services downstream.
The thing is that, with all this hype, who wants it?
Most of us have turned off X/twitter since Musk took over. One in five users have left and, in my own experience, the network is much lesser since the man intervened.
In fact, if you look at it:
- he u-turned on the takeover but was forced to go through it with the US courts;
- he annoyed all the advertisers by telling them to go and “fuck themselves”;
- he sacked four out of five staff members, causing a lot of friction and low morale inside the company;
- he has allowed trolls and haters to proliferate since the takeover;
- this has led to a huge amount of misinformation on X, shared by those with agendas that are not mainstream;
… the list goes on. If you look at a Google search using Generative AI, the list gets even more interesting:
Financial problems: X has faced revenue issues, stagnant user growth, and a loss of value.
Political shift: X has shifted to the right, which has led to a drop in ad revenue.
Bias in moderation: There have been allegations of bias in how X moderates content.
Spread of misinformation: X has been accused of creating incentives for sharing false information.
Suspension of journalists: Some journalists’ accounts have been suspended.
Violent content: X has revised its policies on violent content, including adding guidelines on “coded language” that incites violence.
User exodus: X has seen a large number of users leave the platform.
Support for far-right activists: X has seen posts in support of far-right activists.
Debunked claims: X has seen posts with debunked claims about events like farmer’s protests and a knife attack.
The result of all of the above is that X is “barely breaking even”.
This has led to the banks who backed the takeover looking to get their money back. In a new report by the Wall Street Journal, there are claims that some of the banks that helped Musk finance the twitter deal are getting worried about their investment (some $13 billion of the total) and are looking into how they can claw it back.
Institutions including Bank of America, Barclays, and Morgan Stanley have been holding onto the debt, hoping for more favourable economic headwinds, but will start selling “senior debt at 90-95 cents on the dollar, while retaining more-junior holdings”, according to the WSJ report.
The WSJ report also includes an email sent to staff by Musk, which states that the company has “witnessed the power of X in shaping national conversations and outcomes” but “our user growth is stagnant, revenue is unimpressive, and we’re barely breaking even”.
Elon says he didn’t send that email, even though other news sources corroborate it.
Add on to all this how Musk has been antagonising UK And European governments with his updates, whilst rallying behind Donald Trump, and you have to wonder what his agenda is. Elon Musk is a brilliant businessman, but why is he destroying his reputation with these changes and antics?
Well, he is creating a political platform to influence the world. Take his comments about the grooming gangs in Britain. Ignored by a lot of governmental politicians, it became front page news after his recent updates. In fact, as The Guardian notes, the takeover of twitter may have been a financial disaster but, as a political platform, may be one of the shrewdest things that Elon Musk has ever done. He now rules the world with his over 200 million followers, almost twice the nearest X account (@BarackObama).
So, do you really want an Everything app with a Money Account from this extremist? Well, that’s up to you but, remember, he did co-create PayPal, so I wouldn’t be surprised.
Postscript: Elon is up for a Nobel Peace Prize because of his commitment to free speech
