Here’s how Musk will turn X into an anti-WeChat finance app
One of Musk's first startups was X, a digital bank that gave the entrepreneur part of his current fortune. And now there will be a return to the origins? Facts and scenarios
It is not known what form X will take, the super app that Elon Musk has in mind also to shake off the bulky figure of Meta's Threads from his Twitter, but what is certain is that a lot of money will flow on the platform.
MODEL? WECHAT extension
The South African entrepreneur aims to replicate the formula of WeChat, the all-encompassing app at the basis of Tencent's fortunes which in China was born as an emulator of WhatsApp but was soon enriched with features, especially including payments.
Today it is a real digital wallet: you connect it to a credit card and then scan the QR codes of shopkeepers and professionals to make the transition, without even needing to have the physical card with you. The government has effectively forced every economic sector to join WeChat, so it is even used among private individuals, for example to pay rent.
Western detractors argue that Beijing's interest in this super app is another: to control the population. Let's not forget that social networks are inaccessible in the country and information circulates precisely on this unique, immense digital square, both in the form of chats, real news, and company pages to keep in touch with service managers.
In short, it would be easier for the authorities to control a single place rather than sifting through a thousand virtual streams. Also because in all likelihood they have the source code in hand and thanks to special algorithms, censorship is immediate.
THE RISKS OF SUPER APPS
Naturally, super apps drag along the risks due to the concentration of many services in the hands of a single operator even in accomplished democracies such as Western ones, so Musk's X will first have to obtain the clearance from the antitrust authorities around the world. And those to protect privacy are already pawing.
Considering then that the Community directives on user protection are much stricter than the US ones (so much so that they forced Meta to postpone the launch of Threads), the recent tours of the entrepreneur in the various chancelleries of the Old Continent are also understood.
X OF MUSK AND CRYPTOCURRENCIES
What is certain is that Elon Musk's X or X.com can count on stock and cryptocurrency trading services following its recent alliance with eToro, a global social investing network, to launch $Cashtag, a feature of the social network through which Twitter users can see real-time prices of stocks, cryptocurrencies and other financial assets. The deal includes $Cashtags related to the range of assets already available on the eToro platform, from stocks and ETFs, to cryptocurrencies and commodities.
ONLINE MONEY EX: BACK TO THE ROOTS FOR MUSK
Let's not forget that X.com was one of Elon Musk's first businesses, as well as one of the first online banks. It ended up in Confinity, which used it to give the backbone to a startup that was still little known at the time, PayPal, acquired in 2002 for a billion and a half dollars, with a profit of 180 million dollars for Musk. In short, the Xs are good for Musk. So much so that he bought back the x.com domain from PayPal in 2017, stating that it had "sentimental value".
The reality is that the pandemic has shown that those who manage the flow of digital money, national currencies or crypto, make many others. If then millions of people gather in a single place where there are a plurality of services, from booking food at home to sharing vehicles, up to financial services and trading, it explains why the histrionic Twitter patron wants to go back to his origins at all costs.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/musk-trasformera-x-in-unapp-finanziaria-anti-wechat/ on Tue, 25 Jul 2023 09:01:24 +0000.