Elon Musk, the Tesla billionaire who accidentally caused crypto price chaos this week, has hovered on the fringes of the crypto world in recent years.
The bitcoin price surge to $100,000 per bitcoin last year spurred unprecedented interest in bitcoin and crypto among Wall Street giants and incoming U.S. president Donald Trump—as Musk has declared a “financial emergency.”
Now, as China scrambles to contain a crisis that some think could blow up the bitcoin price, a leak has revealed Elon Musk’s X could be about to “imminently” launch a bitcoin and crypto game-changer.
Elon Musk, Tesla billionaire and X owner, has been known to cause huge bitcoin price swings.
Getty Images
“New X code has just shipped that reveals X Payments will launch without approval from all 50 states,” X influencer Alex Finn posted to the platform. “Meaning X Payments could launch today.”
Since Musk bought Twitter and rebranded it X he has been acquiring money transmitter licences in states across the country as part of a grand plan to grow X into an “everything app” similar to China’s WeChat.
“It seems like X plans to launch X Money in the U.S. before getting approval in all 50 states,” MacRumors contributing researcher Aaron Perris posted to the platform alongside a screenshot of the code, which hasn’t been verified by the company itself.
Earlier this week, X chief executive Linda Yaccarino confirmed payments will be coming to the social media platform in 2025 in the form of X Money along with a raft of other features, telling people to “buckle up.”
X Money’s confirmation has sparked wild speculation that the platform could use or support bitcoin, crypto or dollar-pegged stablecoins that use crypto technology to speed up and reduce the cost of transactions, with Musk’s rocket company SpaceX recently being linked to Tether’s dominant USDT stablecoin.
“X payments in one way or another will support cryptocurrency,” Finn predicted in an X broadcast. “Crypto will probably be a good amount of rails for [X] payments.”
The bitcoin price has surged to around $100,000 per bitcoin, helped by Wall Street adoption, Donald … [+]
Forbes Digital Assets
If bitcoin and crypto do come to X, some have predicted it could cause a bitcoin price boom similar to PayPal’s support for bitcoin and crypto that helped kick off the 2021 bitcoin price bull run.
While Musk has refrained from commenting on bitcoin or crypto directly in recent years, his support of Trump in the run up to the November U.S. presidential election helped drive the bitcoin price higher as traders bet on Trump leading a pro-bitcoin and crypto administration.
Musk also campaigned against excessive U.S. spending, resulting in the creation of the Doge Department Of Government Efficiency, which Musk has said he believes could strip $2 trillion from U.S. spending.
The Doge department is a nod to the shiba inu doge meme that’s also linked to the dogecoin cryptocurrency, named by Elon Musk as his “favorite” cryptocurrency and accepted as payment by his Tesla car company—though Tesla continues to hold around 10,000 bitcoin worth around $1 billion on its balance sheet.
