Turning tweets into exchanges, Musk's super app ambitions

Written by: Cathy

On January 11, 2026, X product lead Nikita Bier posted a tweet that instantly ignited the crypto community.

He announced: Smart Cashtags will go live in February.

This was a typical product update, but the preview screenshot prominently featured “Buy” and “Sell” buttons, making everyone realize—Elon Musk’s “super app” ambitions are finally getting serious.

However, few noticed that Nikita Bier also has another identity: strategic advisor at Solana Labs.

Almost simultaneously, the official Solana team announced deep integration into the X app. Once the news broke, SOL price surged accordingly.

From social hubs to exchanges, X is conducting an unprecedented experiment.

01 From Blue Bird to “Wallet”

To understand X’s financialization ambitions, we must first review its entanglement with cryptocurrencies.

During Jack Dorsey’s tenure, Twitter’s embrace of crypto was highly idealistic. In September 2021, Twitter launched Bitcoin tipping on iOS, enabling near-zero-cost global microtransactions via the Lightning Network. In January 2022, it introduced NFT avatar verification for Twitter Blue users.

But these features were more like “additives” than “catalysts”—users still discussed on Twitter and traded on Coinbase. The information flow and capital flow remained separate.

In October 2022, Musk completed his $44 billion acquisition, and everything began to change.

He quickly removed decorative Web3 features, disbanded the original crypto engineering team, and reassembled a team focused on payment licenses and core financial infrastructure. Dogecoin became the platform’s unofficial mascot—from accepting DOGE payments at Tesla to briefly replacing the Blue Bird logo with a Shiba Inu avatar, Musk used a series of performative acts to embed DOGE into X’s DNA.

More importantly, X Payments LLC has quietly applied for money transfer licenses in various states over the past two years. As of January 2026, approvals have been granted in about 41 states and Washington D.C., covering major states like California, Pennsylvania, Utah, and others with large populations and economies. In January 2025, X also announced a strategic partnership with Visa, enabling real-time deposits and withdrawals via the Visa Direct network.

But behind this impressive record lies a major setback: X Payments withdrew its license application in New York in April 2024 and has not made further progress since.

In May 2025, New York State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal and Representative Micah Lasher jointly wrote to the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS), explicitly opposing the issuance of a license to X. The reasons cited include the “character and fitness” clause in New York banking law—Elon Musk’s management style at Tesla and SpaceX, the significant stake of Saudi investors in X Capital, and Musk’s previous public calls to dismantle federal agencies regulating his businesses—all became targets of opposition.

This means that, in the foreseeable future, X cannot legally provide payment services to New York residents. As a global financial hub, New York’s absence will severely constrain X Payments’ institutional expansion.

The foundation is laid, but the most critical piece is still outside the door.

02 Smart Cashtags: Turning Tweets into Buy Buttons

If X Payments is the financialization foundation, then Smart Cashtags are the user-facing interaction interface.

In current social networks, when a user inputs “$PEPE,” the system doesn’t understand which specific asset it represents. In the crypto space, this is a huge pain point—tokens with the same name may exist on Ethereum, Solana, BSC, and other chains, or countless scam tokens with identical names.

According to Nikita Bier, the core innovation of Smart Cashtags is allowing users to specify particular assets or even smart contract addresses. When mentioning a new meme token, users can bind it to its unique on-chain address.

Once bound, the tag is no longer just a hyperlink but an interactive data object. Clicking the tag will display real-time candlestick charts, price changes, market cap, and related news and social discussions above the timeline.

Nikita revealed that the new API will be able to “almost real-time process any on-chain minted asset.” This suggests that X might rely on decentralized data aggregation tools like DexScreener, Birdeye, etc., to fetch data.

Most notably, the preview screenshot shows “Buy” and “Sell” buttons.

Initially, these buttons may serve as “intent routers”—click “Buy” to invoke the wallet app on the user’s phone (like Phantom, MetaMask) via deep linking, pre-filling trade pairs and amounts automatically.

As X Payments’ licenses mature, the ultimate future may be direct trading within the X app itself. X could aggregate third-party liquidity providers (like Jupiter, Uniswap), acting solely as a front-end portal charging transaction fees.

This will fundamentally change the content ecosystem of the crypto market. Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) will no longer just provide opinions—they will become “trade signal providers.”

03 Why Solana?

Among many blockchain protocols, Solana is gradually becoming X’s preferred partner.

The reason is simple: speed equals justice.

User experience on social networks is measured in milliseconds. Users are accustomed to likes and shares happening instantly. If a transfer takes 15 seconds (Ethereum) or longer, the experience becomes disastrous. Solana’s 400-millisecond block time is one of the closest to Web2 experience among public chains.

More critically, micro-payment economics. X’s vision includes tipping, article-based payments, and similar scenarios. If a $0.10 tip costs $0.05 in gas fees, the model collapses. Solana’s transaction fees below $0.001 make high-frequency microtransactions economically feasible.

Of course, there’s another factor not to overlook: people.

The aforementioned Nikita Bier not only manages X’s product roadmap but also serves as a strategic advisor at Solana Labs. This dual role has sparked controversy in the crypto community over “conflicts of interest” and “suppression of other chains,” but it also ensures Solana’s technology is prioritized on the X platform. Bier has publicly defended this strategy, stating that X’s API aims to support all high-performance on-chain activities, but objectively, Solana’s high throughput makes it the best fit.

The Solana ecosystem’s “Blinks” protocol is even tailored for X.

Imagine a NFT project posting on X: “Click here to mint our latest NFT.” Traditionally, users would click the link, jump to a browser, connect their wallet, sign, and return to the tweet. With Blinks, a “Mint” button appears directly below the tweet; clicking it prompts the wallet to sign, completing the transaction—all without leaving the X app.

If X natively integrates the Blinks standard into its client, it will instantly have the interaction capabilities of all Solana DApps without developing any front-end.

04 Challenges and Questions

The vision is beautiful, but reality is harsh.

First, regulatory issues. As mentioned, X Payments has officially withdrawn its license application in New York. Facing this regulatory barrier, X has adjusted its 2026 rollout strategy from “full-scale launch” to “layered progression”: the first phase will launch P2P tipping and balance features in states where licenses are granted; the second phase will introduce the “X Card” virtual debit card in partnership with Visa. To cope with the absence in states like New York, X will deploy strict geo-fencing technology to block payment access for users in unlicensed regions—this could lead to a fragmented user experience across the US.

Second, security risks. The traditional risk of account hacking still exists—if an account is linked not only to reputation but also to bank cards and crypto wallets, hacker motivation increases exponentially. But more concerning is the new threat posed by Blinks: recently, many phishing links disguised as legitimate Blinks have appeared. Attackers create seemingly official NFT minting buttons; after users sign, their wallet assets are drained.

When the convenience of “one-click trading” meets the risk of “one-click zeroing,” X’s content moderation will face enormous challenges.

05 Conclusion

X’s ongoing financialization experiment is one of the boldest bets in internet history.

It aims to transform the loudest square into the most efficient exchange, building a complete closed loop called “FiSo (Financial Social).”

But risks cannot be ignored. X’s deep involvement in token issuance and trading could easily lead regulators to classify it as an “unregistered securities exchange” or a “broker.” Withdrawing the New York license application may just be the prelude to a regulatory storm.

For the crypto industry, this is both an opportunity and a challenge.

The opportunity lies in billions of users accessing crypto assets through a familiar interface.

The challenge is that traffic and liquidity might once again concentrate in a centralized giant, contradicting the original decentralized vision of cryptocurrencies.

Regardless of success or failure, X’s leap will redefine the boundaries between social media and financial technology.