Elon Musk: “I’m Going To Execute The X.com Playbook From 22 Years Ago…”

November 5, 2022 9:14 pm Comments

Credit where credit is due…I remember the Digital Asset Investor (@DigitalAssetBuy on YouTube) being on this topic at least two years ago.

Way before Elon Musk ever talked about wanting to purchase Twitter.

Way before most people had ever heard of X.com.

Way before most people even knew who the “PayPal Mafia” were.

DAI was teaching and connecting dots and talking about Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, nodes on Satellites, the odd fascination with the letter “X”, PayPal Galactic and so much more.

I remember early on many people laughing at what DAI was saying.

They’re not laughing anymore.

Here is Elon Musk himself now saying point blank: my next intention is to execute the X.com game plan from 22 years ago.

Watch here:

Pretty incredible to see this stuff literally playing out before our eyes.

The only piece of the puzzle that hasn’t yet dropped into place?

Public disclosure that Elon Musk is DEEP in with XRP.

Will that come next?

Keep watching!

From the same event, here is Elon talking about the new features of Twitter Blue that will soon roll out:

Even the NY Times is now on the story:

What is X?

Mr. Musk, the richest man in the world and the chief executive of the auto company Tesla, has been thin on details about what an “everything app” would look like. But he has expressed interest in making a worldwide social media platform modeled after WeChat, which is owned by the Chinese technology giant Tencent.

In China, WeChat is used by more than a billion people as an all-in-one social media, instant messaging and mobile payment app. Used to order food, hail cabs and find news, it is sewn into the fabric of daily life. Mr. Musk has said that if enough people worldwide used a similar app to communicate, it could establish a payment system as well

“I think such an app would be really useful. And just the utility of sort of a spam-free thing where you could make comments, you could post videos — I think it’s important for content creators to have a revenue share,” Mr. Musk said on a podcast in May.

Elon Musk’s Acquisition of Twitter

How does Twitter factor into X?

Mr. Musk has not publicly offered a plan or timeline for X. But he has said that, despite not being necessary to create X, “Twitter probably accelerates X by three to five years.” Should Mr. Musk acquire Twitter, it is unclear if he would make X from scratch using parts of Twitter, or turn Twitter into X.

During a question-and-answer session with Twitter employees in June, Mr. Musk said that he viewed the company as a digital town square “essential for a functioning democracy” but that it ought to include as much of the world as possible. To encourage people to use and stay on the platform, it should be more all-encompassing, like WeChat, he said.

In 2020, a Twitter user proposed that Mr. Musk create X “to ensure human survival and progress.” This version of X, the user suggested, would be the parent company of Tesla; SpaceX; Mr. Musk’s brain computer company, Neuralink; and his tunnel construction company, the Boring Company. Mr. Musk called the proposal a “good idea.” Whether X is meant to be a conglomeration of Mr. Musk’s companies, a global WeChat or something else is unknown.

X is also the name of the three holding companies Mr. Musk registered in Delaware to acquire Twitter. If the acquisition takes place, X Holdings I will function as Twitter’s parent company, X Holdings II will buy Twitter and X Holdings III will fund the deal, according to regulatory filings.

What is the history behind X?

Mr. Musk has said he has “a fondness for the letter X.” X is how he publicly refers to his first child with Claire Boucher, the musician known as Grimes, but his history with the letter dates back to at least 1999, when he helped found X.com, an online bank.

In 2000, X.com merged with Confinity, a competing software company. In 2001, Peter Thiel, one of Confinity’s founders, replaced Mr. Musk as X.com’s chief executive, and the company was renamed PayPal.

In 2017, Mr. Musk bought the domain for X.com from PayPal. The website currently directs to a blank white page, save a black lowercase “x” in the upper left corner. A separate page, X.com/x, directs to a page with a lowercase “y,” which is the nickname of Mr. Musk’s second child with Grimes.

The Verge is also picking up the story (about two years after DAI):

Now, Musk has reclaimed a bit of that internet history for himself by purchasing the defunct domain name X.com from his former employer PayPal, which confirmed the purchase to Business Insider after internet domain blog Domain Investing reported on the purchase earlier today. “We are delighted to sell the domain X.com back to its previous owner, Elon Musk,” a PayPal spokesperson said in a statement given to BI.

X.com has a storied internet history behind it
To understand the significance of the URL, you have to dial all the way back to 2000, when Musk’s online financial services company X.com merged with Confinity, which at the time operated a little-known money transfer service called PayPal. Confinity was co-founded by Peter Thiel and Max Levchin, now notable internet entrepreneurs and investors — Thiel became a billionaire by investing early in Facebook, while Levchin went on to help found Yelp and currently operates a digital loan service called Affirm.

Back when the two companies merged, it was decided by investors and board members that X.com had more brand recognition than Confinity. However, the entire company was rebranded as PayPal in 2001, a year after Musk left the company over disagreements with other executive members. But PayPal later went public and got scooped up by Ebay for $1.5 billion in 2002, netting Musk somewhere in the range of $160 to $180 million after taxes.

Fast forward a decade and a half — and three multi-billion-dollar enterprises in the electric car, solar energy, and space transport industries later — and Musk is now one of the most successful entrepreneurs on the planet. With a net worth of more than $15.3 billion thanks to his holdings in Tesla, SpaceX, and SolarCity, Musk can purchase whatever he likes, including defunct domain names.

ZD Net explains more about the “everything app”:

So what is “X, the everything app?” Musk has in the past floated the idea of turning Twitter into the next “super app,” on par with multi-faceted platforms popular in Asia, such as WeChat or Grab.

Back in May on the All-In podcast, Musk said that the US needs a super app. “It’s either convert Twitter to that, or start something new. It does need to happen somehow,” he said.

“If you’re in China, you kind of live on WeChat,” Musk said. “It does everything. It’s sort of like Twitter, plus PayPal, plus a whole bunch of things all rolled into one, with a great interface. It’s really an excellent app, and we don’t have anything like that outside of China.”

Also: Twitter is bringing podcasts onto its platform

The super app, he continued, should serve as a “digital town square” that lets users leave comments and post videos. Once the platform had a high level of trust among the public, Musk said, “then payments, whether it’s crypto or fiat, can make a lot of sense.”

At a town hall event with Twitter employees a month later, Musk reiterated that idea. In China, “you basically live on WeChat,” Musk said, “because it’s so usable and helpful to daily life, and I think if we can achieve that, or even get close to that at Twitter, it would be an immense success.” He also suggested that Twitter’s user base could grow from just over 200 million to “at least a billion people,” CNN reported.

On Twitter on Tuesday, Musk said that, “Twitter probably accelerates X by 3 to 5 years, but I could be wrong.” The next day, he remarked, “Twitter is an accelerant to fulfilling the original X.com vision.”

Meanwhile at Twitter, the old guard is gone:

And Elon is promising massive immediate improvements, even before the grand scale of X.com comes into play:

It seems like a good time to be bullish on Twitter, bullish on Elon, and bullish on X.com!

If you’d like to dig deeper, keep reading…

Let’s start with this fascinating tweet threat from @1MarkMoss:

I told you it was good!

But I have more…

We’ve covered Elon Musk and his fascination with the letter “X” many times here at ProCoinNews, and it’s always fascinating to dig up new connections.

The @CroissantEth on Twitter just posted an awesome write up making many connections and tying the story together in a brilliant way.

Here was the entire Twitter thread:

Working Money Channel is also connecting some big dots:

Full video here:

It’s X.

It always has been X.

And that means…XRP and XLM.

Want to go deeper?

Here’s more:

Elon Musk: Purchasing Twitter Will Accelerate “X” By 3-5 Years!

Elon Musk sure does love the letter “X”.

He named a kid X.

He named a car X.

He named a couple companies X.

I’ll explain all of that in more detail below…

But for now we have to talk about his latest reference to X.

And it has to do with Twitter.

Oh, and did I mention #XRP starts with “X” and Elon was the founder of the Paypal Mafia?

Just a huge coincidence, I’m sure.

But I’m getting ahead of myself again.

We’ll cover all of that here in just a minute below.

But the big news of the day is Elon Musk suddenly doing an about-face (which we predicted — All The World’s A Stage?) and agreeing to buy Twitter and close immediately for the originally agreed-upon price.

Game-set-match.  Checkmate!

The news took everyone by surprise.

But what Elon posted afterwards is what really has my attention.

Take a look:

Really, Elon….you don’t say?

You want to create “X” — the Everything app?

What an interesting name!

He wasn’t done.

Later in the day he said buying Twitter accelerates his plans by 3-5 years:

Our friend XRP Crypto Wolf was all over it:

Exactly right!

And you gotta love this meme video posted by yzy.eth:

Elon explains a bit more what “X” might be in this clip:

And now if you haven’t been following the connection between Elon and X, please allow me to indulge you.

This might blow your mind…

Elon Musk’s Connection To “X” and XRP — EXPOSED

With Elon Musk dominating the news and especially the Twitter news, I thought it was a good time to re-examine his origins in the online payments space, his connection to the letter “X”, and his many connections to “XRP”.

Shall we dig in?

To begin, let me just say flat out that Elon Musk is one of my favorite people on the planet.

Endlessly fascinating, endless value to society, endless creativity!

And now we know he’s pro-Free Speech.

That’s a good guy in my book.

In the crypto world, he’s well known for supporting DOGE coin, but it’s never totally made sense.

The smartest man on the planet is supporting a meme coin?

I want to take a moment and ask a question:  what if the Digital Asset Investor is right and “all the world’s a stage”?

What if Elon’s fling with DOGE and all the Mainstream Media attention to BTC and ETH is just to keep you distracted while the real deal was going down?

It’s not as crazy as it might sound, and the more you look behind the curtain the more dots seem to suddenly start connecting….

Let’s take a deeper look….

Did you know Elon seems to have a fascination with the letter “X”?

Many people may not know he purchased and founded X.com which later was rebranded into PayPal:

https://twitter.com/SeptembersRain/status/1472013298740645888

Then he moved on to space and there’s that letter again in SpaceX:

Oh and what about Tesla you ask?

Well they just so happen to have a “Model X”:

Ok, ok….now I understand one letter does not a connection make.

But it’s interesting and it’s only our starting point.

Then we move beyond companies to his kid, who he named what else but X (and some other letters I don’t quite know how to type on the keyboard):

This was hilarious:

https://twitter.com/PipingDilatPH/status/1470659356241063938

Now let’s go back to PayPal…

Given his work at Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Company, Neurolink and everything else, it’s easy to forget Elon got his start in the PAYMENTS industry (PayPal).

Don’t forget that.

Have to give credit to the Digital Asset Investor for being on this many months ago, and reminding us all of something called PayPal Galactic:

And this:

And this:

From Phys.org, talk of the first “intergalactic currency” started back in 2013 and was all about PayPal:

Earthbound financial transactions service PayPal launched a quest for an intergalactic currency, saying it is time to figure out what space travelers will use as cash.

“The time has now come for us to start planning for the future; a future where we aren’t just talking about global payments,” said PayPal president David Marcus. “We are expanding our vision off earth into space.”

PayPal Galactic Initiative will be formally unveiled Thursday at the SETI Institute campus in the Silicon Valley city of Mountain View, with attendees to include famed alien seeker Jill Tarter and former US astronaut Buzz Aldrin.

The initiative, headed by PayPal, aims to bring together parties with roles to play in the commercialization of space to explore a framework for a financial system that spans galaxies.

You know who else was in the “PayPal Mafia” back in the very early days?

Big time XRP investor Peter Thiel.

Here he is back in 1999:

Let’s recap: you have the richest man and likely smartest man on the planet with his roots in the payments industry, obsessed with the letter X, starts talking about “PayPal Galactic” but then that suddenly disappears as XRP is created, a man all about energy efficiency and saving the planet…..and then we take a hard left turn and he’s into DOG-COIN?

Really folks?

Now let’s add one more connection that is almost too irresistible….

Of all the people/companies in the world, who are the first two that come to mind that hate the SEC?

Bingo:

If you think this article is all pure speculation….it is, except it’s not just me.

Others are beginning to make the connection.

Like XRP Bush:

And XRP Daddy:

And Mason Versluis:

And of course DAI who has been on this story for a long time:

And now as people are connecting the dots and realizing that Elon hates the SEC as much as all the XRP holders who have been harmed by the SEC, calls are growing for Elon to get involved and blow the story wide open:

Like this rare non-satire Tweet from XRP the Standard Productions:

And Stefan Huber:

And the Spanish Billionaire:

And Mark:

And my man Crypto Bull:

If you want to go much deeper on this, the Digital Asset Investor put together an awesome video about a year ago doing a deep dive that is really worth your time.

Enjoy:

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